Turnaround Benefits

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When to Realize them and how to Accrue them.

Annualized Savings of 5% total Turnaround Budget are possible.

The benefits of effective turnaround management systems are realized in a very short timeframe but are accrued over a much longer time.
In this crazy post-COVID new-normal, many jobs have been eliminated and costs cut from every department. The low-hanging fruit has already been picked and few significant cost reduction opportunities remain.
One of the last and biggest remaining cost reduction opportunities lies with improved turnaround system management. It’s a large prize but is hard to grab.

Savings of 5% can be realized on an annual basis. It may not sound a lot, but for major energy companies with a billion-dollar turnaround budget it represents a $50 Million annual cost saving, and that is significant.
If you’re wondering how so much cost can be saved by what amounts to a couple of months of intense project effort, the savings accrue from the day a turnaround makes it onto the long-term budget and accumulate until after the turnaround is complete.

Turnaround savings occur in the Planning, Execution and Closeout phases and require flawless process and system integration.
Companies who believe their turnaround businesses processes are good should have little problem realizing the financial benefits. Theirs is a system integration opportunity. The systems are less important than the integration, but spreadsheets are not a system and will need to be replaced.
Companies with sub-optimal turnaround business processes will have a lot more work to do as they need to develop better processes and then systemize them. Alternatively, they can leverage off-the-shelf turnaround management software, but they then must transform the organization to use the new software and baked-in business process.

There is a difference between system integration and advanced system integration. For example, connecting your scheduling application with your maintenance management system is system integration.
But advanced system integration adds process intelligence and data integration. Using the above example, your scheduling system is connected to your maintenance management system, which is connected to your turnaround planning system which is connected to your turnaround procurement and warehouse management system, etc., etc.
By definition: Advanced System Integration is the combination of a fully integrated turnaround data model and intelligent integration.

So the systems are less important than the data and the integration. This is an important statement because far too often companies will discard perfectly good systems and replace them with ‘best-in-class’ applications, only to find themselves worse off than they were before.
Systems are not islands. If you think that simply buying all the best-of-breed applications will deliver turnaround management system excellence, you will be in for a shock.
Indeed, you may well find yourself worse off than before. Why? Because best-of-breed systems tend to force their own process and data model onto you. When you compound this across many systems, you add turbulence to the data flow and that slows the process down.

Squeezing business benefit out of best-of-breed software applications is certainly achievable but requires strict discipline along the entire data model.
For example, just because your scheduling application supports cost management doesn’t mean you should use it for cashflow planning. This is where things go wrong for most companies as subject matter experts push very strongly to use systems they like and work in to run processes that are better run elsewhere. Compound that problem across the entire turnaround management ecosystem and you can see how value gets lost.

Xytalis is not a software partner. We receive no revenue from software companies and prefer to work with the systems you have, to develop the data model unique to your system current architecture.
Two points to clarify though:
1) Spreadsheets are not systems, no matter how complex they are
2) If you have a whitespace gap (e.g. your current turnaround worklist planning system is a spreadsheet or even paper-based) then we need to address that and we can help you identify the best solution

​Contact us if any of these points below relate to your turnaround system processes. We can set-up a one-hour, no-pressure call to discuss how to help you realize turnaround benefits.

• You have good people and processes, but are frustrated with the quality of your turnaround management system architecture

• You rely on spreadsheets and flat files to manage and move data across the turnaround lifecycle

• Your SAP system is not set-up to manage turnarounds and nobody knows how to configure it properly

• Too many of your turnaround management systems are ‘islands’ that lack integration

• You lack control during the turnaround planning and execution phases and feel exposed when things go wrong