When making choices, companies focus on three criteria: scalability, employee empowerment, and IT/OT convergence. Management identified a number of operational challenges (some obvious, others emerging over time) and set out to find standards-compliant solutions to implement the process in a planned way. Flexibility, communication, and collaboration across a company's business units became essential.
Many business leaders are thinking hard about how to apply advanced technologies (such as big data analytics and machine learning, 3D printing or virtual reality) to their business, and how to achieve their business goals in a forward-looking way and achieve far-reaching, long-term success. They want to know what similar companies have done in the process of digital transformation, what challenges they have encountered and how they have solved them.
Ergon Refining Company is a specialty lubricants producer owned by the Ergon Group. The company's smart, culture-driven approach to implementing new automation solutions has resulted in transformative results in a rapidly changing market and increasing industry competition.
Special lubricating oil production quality first. Ergon's digital journey tells the story of how it makes investment decisions in new technologies. As early as ten years ago, Ergon Group began to promote enterprise information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) cooperation, which has played a positive role in the realization of the company's growth and diversification vision.
The Ergon Group has more than 3,000 employees and six plants, of which Ergon Refining has grown to become the world's largest producer of naphthene processing oils with a capacity of 26,500 barrels of crude oil per day. The process is particularly unique: the plant uses a distributed control system (DCS) to produce specialty petroleum products, and maintaining high standards of product consistency, repeatability, quality and stability during product loading is essential to Ergon's business model, creating the need for automation.
Once the specialty oil is produced, it is stored near the refinery and transported directly by barge, truck or rail to the end user or to receiving stations around the world. Cycloalkyl, process and insulating oils produced at the plant have been used by Ergon's customers worldwide in a variety of applications, including but not limited to transformer oils, compound mixing operations, rubber products, chemical treatments, metalworking fluids, freezing oils, hydraulic fracturing oils, coatings and lubricants.
Embrace a digital culture. What sets Ergon apart from most other refineries is not only the professionalism of its business, but also its close-knit, family-style corporate culture. Business leaders implement digital plans and ideas to drive continuous change.
Ergon considers himself not only an early adopter of new technology, but also a savvy user. Jeremy Kyser, Vice President of Ergon Refining, said: "For many years, our strategy has been to adopt new technologies, systems and processes that allow us to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and expand our global customer base." Like many refineries, Ergon's management keeps a close eye on innovative technologies in process control, wireless instrumentation and data analytics, as well as cutting-edge developments in automation. But when it comes to the overall digital transformation strategy, company leadership has been vigilant in asking two key questions: Why change, and why risk investing in unproven new technologies?
"We're investing a lot in digital transformation and landing it in a variety of ways," said Steve Elwart, Ergon's Director of Systems Engineering. "One of the easy ways to do this is to follow best practices. Another approach is to tell a story. We can see the impact of inadequate technology on the business, and then use that to create a roadmap for how to improve performance to help management more clearly see the value of investing in automation."
The strategic planning was gradually expanded. Ergon chose a more balanced strategy: they wanted to be at the forefront of experimenting with new technologies for automation, but instead of pursuing a one-step approach, they adopted solutions that were working while being continuously scalable, and were agile enough to adopt other potential solutions in the future until they found a solution that was perfectly suited to this particular application.
Through digital transformation, companies have improved their performance in terms of reliability, quality control, safety and compliance. "Each product produced has different specifications and parameters," said Lance Puckett, executive vice president of Refining and marketing at Ergon. "Having real-time data during the production of these products helps maintain consistency in today's market needs." The focus on quality control solidifies the company's reputation as one of the leading producers of specialty lubricants and increases its global market share. Ergon currently exports its products to more than 90 countries worldwide and this number continues to grow.
Prioritize projects based on measurable results. For Ergon, the key to digital transformation has always been how to prioritize digital projects to achieve the best results both operationally and financially.
When making choices, companies focus on three criteria: scalability, employee empowerment, and IT/OT convergence. Management identified a number of operational challenges (some obvious, others emerging over time) and set out to find standards-compliant solutions to implement the process in a planned way. Flexibility, communication, and collaboration across a company's business units became essential.
Over the years, as the automation industry continues to innovate, Ergon's first criterion when deciding whether to adopt new hardware or software technologies is whether they are truly applicable and can be easily scaled across a wider range of operations. This not only ensures that it can be recognized at the enterprise level, but also means that companies can pilot projects with lower operational and financial risk, and then make further decisions based on the initial results.
Second, the adoption of every new digital technology, whether a graphical upgrade to a control system or an upgrade to predictive asset management software, requires that workers be more productive, not only because of the experience gap that retirees may create, but also because of the firm's belief that training can equip employees to perform basic operations and improve their knowledge and skills.
