M3 Technology Professional Services
M3 Tech's team leverages proprietary methodologies and techniques and deep domain knowledge in scheduling and planning to ensure successful project execution and persistence of realized value across a variety of plant facilities and situations.
M3 Technology provides Professional Services that empower our customers to drive additional cost from the supply chain and greatly improve inventory management. M3 Tech's expertise covers a wide range of consulting services.
M3 Technology offers professional services to help clients achieve higher performance in many areas:
Examples
Finished Product Blending Optimization Improvements
One of the most important decisions a refinery makes is determining what optimal blend components should be used to maximize profit while meeting stringent quality specifications for finished products.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- Identifying opportunities to reduce quality giveaway
- Analyzing blend correlations and enhancing quality predictions
- Providing complex blend methods such as CARBOB, CaRFG3 predictive model, EPA's RFG complex model, and Ethyl and mobile transform method for octane blending, and various distillation blending methods
- Optimizing multiple blends while maintaining component inventories
- Forecasting buy/sell actions to minimize feedstock working capital
- Integration with blend property controllers for recipe execution
Crude Blending Optimization Improvements
Differentials in crude prices and prediction of mixed crude slate properties allows refineries to minimize crude costs and maximize throughput by running closer to process tolerances.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- Using crude price differentials to minimize cost while making process targets by forecasting blended crude properties across multiple periods
- Maximizing throughput with example such as targeting API and while meeting sulfur and TAN (total acid number) constraints
- Predicting and optimizing pipeline crude batch properties for inland refineries
- Using improved viscosity predictors such as ASTM D88 and pour point
- Integrating with assay management systems for temperature cuts and yield vectors
- What-if best practices for distressed cargo analysis and profitability forecasting
Dock Scheduling Improvements and Demurrage Reduction
Accurate dock scheduling goes beyond using average estimates by taking into account a nomination's status, terminal and vessel constraints, and material availability to avoid costly mistakes in excess of $25,000/day of demurrage.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- Dealing with multiple constraints such as tug boat availability, transit constraints, berth constraints, simultaneous loading and unloading constraints, Allotted Unloading Time (AUT),
- Configuring demurrage calculations, handling physical limit delays for receipts/shipments, developing custom arrival window priorities, embedding channel movement constraints necessary to forecast demurrage,
- Enabling automation for docks/berths assignments, improving berth scheduling for liquid natural gas (LNG) operations,
- Creation of Automatic Delivery Programs (ADP), Annual Delivery Plan (ADP), Annual Maintenance Program (AMP), terminal scheduling, and feasible cargo schedules,
- Using best practices for demurrage reduction across multiple sites including those with shared nominations
Product Distribution Optimization
Supply chain optimization solves the challenge of getting the Right Product at the Right Place at the Right Time at the Right Price.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- Creating distribution plans that maximize profit with least costs
- Solving multi-period supply demand problems and interpreting optimal solutions
- Minimizing transportation, inventory, and overhead costs
- Re-optimizing distribution plans for frequent weather changes
- Re- recalculating forecasted distribution plans based on periodic price changes, accommodating government blend regulations and ethanol blends
- Solving multi-location supply chain problems including accounting for different material lot size and costs including vessel multiple drop off points (e.g., milk-runs)
- Using visual economics analysis and solver optimization technology
Tankage Justification and Adequacy Studies using LP Analysis
Capital improvement projects require demand planning, utilization case studies, and benefit justification. Models can provide insight to capacity improvement opportunities as well as case benefit results.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- Using models to provide scientific basis for improvement opportunities
- Using LP cases to replicate operational variations including different crude delivery plans and segregation methods
- Analyzing the impact on capacity in situations of preventative maintenance, tank outage, and tank switching
- Maximizing benefits ($$$) over scalable time periods with multiple crude policies while accounting for inactive time periods for cost justification
- Conducting exhaustive case analysis for determining tank adequacy in variable crude availability
Model Maintenance and Enhancements
Model tuning and maintenance is no longer optional given tight margins. Incremental investments in maintenance can keep ROI at expected levels.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- SIMTO consultants can lead or assist with improvement to keep the return on investment high
- Automating new scheduling procedures to meet process flow changes or advanced scheduling logistics such as blending to specific API for receipts and tank transfers
- Adding new process units, blenders, and other assets. Using new yield tables and validation of scheduled vs. actual results
- Develop integration for assay management, oil movements, blend property controllers, process historians, laboratory management systems, pipeline transfer systems
- Turnaround scheduling planning, testing cuts for improved distillation results
- Custom reporting for balance/imbalance, plan vs. schedule vs. actual dashboards, runouts, product pool reporting, cargo schedules, electronic bulletin boards (EBB) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration
Scheduling for Performance
Refineries are looking for ways to improve profits under the pressures of business climate, regulatory compliance, and customers' demands. One way is to improve the utilization of current assets through scheduling for performance.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- Improving asset utilization beyond inventory and tank management
- Maximizing throughput with existing process unit limitations
- Managing the quality of process streams for faster response to changes in the crude oil market,
- Monitoring intermediate streams not only to maximize production but also to fill process units and comply with environmental regulations
- Optimizing both short-term/long-term schedules for increased profits
- Adding financial analysis reporting to show scheduling impacts in $$$
- Integrating LP planning parameters for process unit optimization
Supply Chain Improvements
Many companies utilize reactionary procedures to accomplish supply chain planning. Successful companies respond to new business knowledge quickly by applying agile supply chain technology.
M3 has assisted clients with:
- Resolving supply chain imbalances such as raw material receipts lagging forecasted nominations, insufficient terminal inventories to meet demand, refinery production mismatch with demand within time constraints
- Enabling multiple functional perspectives such as the refinery planner (monthly LP recommendation), sales and marketing (demand and pricing), trading (buy options, exchanges, etc.), logistics (terminals and distribution)
- Reducing manufacturing costs by aligning the refinery production forecast with demand and trading opportunities
- Bi-directional LP integration with the supply plan via LP synthesis (supply chain plan to LP optimizer) and assembly (LP optimizer to supply chain plan)
- Improved Make-Buy-Sell decisions using supply chain economics
- Implementing a common visual planning workspace for multiple perspectives
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