Cracking The Case - How Data Insights Made The Difference

Outage Outrage

The client, a successful global oil and gas corporation, came to Empirisys with a problem. Their catalytic cracking system was unreliable, causing numerous costly and time consuming outages and unplanned service trips.

2020 8 trips 2021 6 trips

Cracking is a process in which large hydrocarbon molecules are broken up -or ‘cracked’ - into smaller, more valuable hydrocarbon molecules.

Considerable effort had been spent trying to get to the root cause. Was it an engineering issue or a technical malfunction? What the client needed was a fresh perspective; new insights, unearthed by looking at different data sets in a different way.

Gathering Data

The Empirisys team was able to bring together 11 datasets from different departments across the client’s business, such as maintenance, reliability and alarm data but also HR, competency, and churn.

The data sets were then combined and scrutinised using a range of advanced stats and ML tools. This enabled Empirisys data scientists to reveal insights which would have been impossible to obtain from individual datasets.

Better Together

Empirisys’ tried and tested ‘one team’ strategy meant a close collaborative environment, pairing with the client’s data science and technical teams to focus on co-developed solutions.

Digging Deep Data

The data science solution centred around five separate insights – each informative on their own, but when combined told a compelling story of what was going on in the asset in terms of reduced capability, churn rate, leadership capability, and the ability to complete work.

Using operational experience, the team were able to pinpoint where the deficiencies lay, formulating ways ahead to help operational leadership and frontline supervisors coach their staff and deliver improvements.

Collaborative Clients

By making sure the client was onboard and at the centre of the project, the data science team was able to guide them through the process; putting the insight from data analysis through Empirisys’ ‘lens’ of process safety and engineering capabilities.

This proved to be essential in showcasing to the client what the data was telling them in a practical, actionable way.

Striking Gold

The results were immediate and impressive: In 2020, the cat cracking issue necessitated eight unplanned site visits. In 2021, there were six. Following the data insight learnings in 2022,  there was only one unplanned site visit required.

Mining data for vital insights enabled the Empirisys team to propose and then implement a solution centred around leadership effectiveness training for the client’s asset leader and her direct report team.

By designing and implementing a six month leadership training program, the relationship has gone from strength to strength, and unplanned outages have been reduced substantially.

As a result of their enhanced leadership capabilities, the client is now leading and supervising more effectively, while prioritising work across the company.