The essence of this study is to measure the factors that lead to the negative perception of poor service delivery from the Supply and Demand Management (SDM) department of Company X. The Sasolburg operation was selected to pilot the study in order to determine the underlying issues that contribute to the perceived poor service delivery. Improved service delivery would contribute to the organisation’s overall strategy of functional excellence through its operations and service departments. Using a qualitative approach, this study attempts to obtain a clear insight of the perception of poor service delivery and ways of stimulating uniform approaches in order to being able to work together It is essential for the organisation to regularly assess its operational performance in order to ascertain whether progress has been made in terms of strategy changes. The purpose of the study is not to prove that the supply and demand department is not delivering to expectations, but to measure the delivery the factors that create the perception of poor service delivery. The initiative is also to identify the weaknesses, and suggest how these weaknesses can be remedied as well as to share the findings with the various stakeholders within the organisation. The findings of the study demonstrate that communication gaps exists within the organisation and communication is perceived as playing a key role in overcoming poor service delivery / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This study describes tripper car operators’ exposure to coal tar pitch volatiles at an operation at Coal Distribution Steam Plant that involves the use of coal tar mix to feed as fuel the steam generating boilers. A cross-sectional task-based exposure assessment approached was used. The objectives of this study were to monitor tripper car operators’ exposures to coal tar pitch volatiles as benzene soluble fraction and to then compare the measured concentrations with the occupational exposure limit. The general aim of the study was to accumulate data about employee exposure to coal tar pitch volatiles in South African Petrochemical Refineries. A total of 56 samples was collected and analyzed for coal tar pitch volatiles – benzene soluble fraction. Of the 56 samples, 41 were personal samples collected on the breathing zones of the workers and 15 samples were field blank samples. The method used for the collection of the samples was the United States Department of Labor, Occupational Safety & Health Administration Method 58. In South Africa the available occupational exposure limit for coal tar pitch volatiles is the time weighted average occupational exposure limit – recommended limit for cyclohexane soluble fraction which is 0.14 mg/m3. For the evaluation of personal exposure to compare with the occupational exposure limit, the UK Health & Safety Executive Method for the Determination of Hazardous Substances (MDHS) 68 was adopted in the past to monitor workplace air. This method was since withdrawn by the Health & Safety Executive after research conducted by the Health & Safety Laboratory revealed that unacceptable variability were introduced into the method due to the small mass changes involved and the difficulty in accurately weighing the filters before and after the cyclohexane extraction. Due to the unavailability of a suitable and acceptable method to assess workers’ exposure to coal tar pitch volatiles – cyclohexane soluble fraction to compare to the South African occupational exposure limit, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration Method Number 58 was used during this study for the collection of the samples. This is a validated method. This method follows a similar approach as the MDHS 68 however benzene is used instead of cyclohexane during sample extraction. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration have the permissible exposure limit of 0.2 mg/m3 for coal tar pitch volatiles – benzene soluble fraction to use when assessing worker exposure. This limit was used during this study for assessing tripper car exposure to coal tar pitch volatiles. No coal tar pitch volatiles were detected on the samples collected during the study. The results revealed concentrations below detection limit of the test laboratory analytical method. The detection limit used thereof was 0.1 mg per sample. The tripper car operators were therefore exposed to coal tar pitch volatiles at concentrations that complied with the permissible exposure limit 0.2 mg/m3. The hypothesis of this study was that the tripper car operators at Coal Distribution Steam Plant are over exposed to coal tar pitch volatiles – benzene soluble fraction. This hypothesis is therefore rejected. Based on the results derived from this study it is recommended that further research studies be conducted specifically with focus on different methods of exposure assessment to workers exposed to coal tar pitch volatiles in South African Petrochemical Refinery Plants. - ii - Since the method used was limited to the particulate phase of the contaminant exposure, with the gaseous phase of exposure to coal tar pitch volatiles only looked at when the PEL is exceeded. A method that can measure both the gaseous and particulate phase of the contaminant must be investigated.

A indústria petroquímica brasileira, assim como outros setores consolidados e maduros, está acostumada a inovar incrementalmente em produtos e processos, mas para manter sua competitividade tem a necessidade de inovar mais e mais radicalmente. Tanto na literatura pesquisada quanto nos resultados dos estudos de caso realizados, há o conceito de que os Projetos Organizacionais para o desenvolvimento de inovações radicais e incrementais deveriam ser diferentes entre si. Mas a literatura não avança nesta questão, não apresentando recomendações ou prescrições assertivas. Por outro lado, sente-se a mesma dificuldade nas empresas, que entendem a necessidade de lidar com as inovações radicais de uma forma distinta das incrementais, mas acabam trabalhando em ambas da mesma forma, com estruturas distintas, porém com semelhante organização, com as mesmas ferramentas e práticas gerenciais. Este trabalho tem por objetivo contribuir com esta discussão, através da proposição de critérios para o Projeto Organizacional adequado ao desenvolvimento de inovações incrementais e radicais de forma sistemática em empresas consolidadas de setores maduros, aprofundando o que já foi proposto pela literatura, partindo do princípio de que não haveria um único modelo a ser prescrito. A pesquisa de campo foi realizada através do estudo de múltiplos casos em três empresas inovadoras do setor petroquímico brasileiro, onde foram avaliados onze projetos de inovação. O modelo aqui proposto oferece um conjunto de diretrizes e critérios para que cada empresa adapte suas estruturas e processos a cada diferente desafio encontrado pelos projetos de inovação em cada etapa de seu desenvolvimento. / The Brazilian Petrochemical Industry, as well as other established and mature sectors, is used to incrementally innovate in products and processes. In order to maintain its competitiveness, it is being challenged to innovate more and more radically. Both in literature and in results of the cases here studied, there is the idea that the Organizational Design for the development of radical and incremental innovations should be different. But literature does not advance in this subject, there is no assertive recommendations or prescriptions. Companies feel the same difficulty, they understand the need to deal with radical innovations in a distinct form of incremental ones, but they end up working in both situations in the same way, with different structures, but with similar organization, management tools and practices. This thesis attempts to contribute to this discussion by proposing criteria for Organizational Design suitable for the development of incremental and radical innovations in a systematic manner in consolidated companies from mature industries, deepening what has been proposed in the literature, assuming that there would be no single model to be prescribed. Field research was conducted through multiple cases study in three innovative companies in the Brazilian petrochemical sector, where eleven innovation projects were studied. The model here proposed offers a set of guidelines and criteria for each company to adapt its structures and processes for each different challenge faced by innovation projects at each stage of their development.

Because of the globalization, oil/energy crisis, divergent political senses, conflicts between economy development and eco strategy, local protest, and China¡¦s open economical strategy, the economy in Taiwan is beaten heavily, especially petrochemical industry. Since Mai-Liao No.6-Naphtha Cracking prject was finished, the manufacturers who supply the equipments are seriously damaged. They can only try to earn orders from international markets. Fortunately, Middle-east, Thailand and China constructing new petrochemical industrial areas in the recent years, and this gives Taiwan manufacturers a slim chance to survive. Certainly, they are facing more difficulties include the business scale, closeness, material-specialty, and the specific request of clients. To the traditional engineering-service industry, no matter to F-company or others, global marketing is the way they must go ahead. Therefore, through the questionnaire which directs to the key factors of success global marketing of petrochemical equipment manufacturers, and analyzed by AHP method, I advance the following opinions: A.In the key factors of success global marketing of petrochemical equipment manufacturers, the internal process is the most important, the secondary are relationship marketing and customer management, and organization and human resource. B.All key factors of global marketing in order are: 1. Match the quality requested by customer. 2. Price with competition. 3. Date of delivery with competition. 4. Promotion of customer-value, satisfied and reliable products/services. 5. Build and maintain good customer relationship. 6. Collaboration of up-down stream (strategy alliance) 7. Attitude and enthusiasm of employees. 8. Promotion of employees¡¦ skill (training) 9. Knowledge management of core competition. 10. Brand image (Complementary Asset.) 11. Corporation of organization and system. 12. Excellent marketing brain. 13. Ability of global marketing. 14. Analysis of customer request and self-SWOT. This research may be referred to petrochemical equipment manufacturers, and help them to learn and bring their own character and successful factors into play to achieve the success of global marketing.

Petroleum refining and the petrochemical industry account for a major share in the world energy and industrial market. In many situations, they represent the economy back-bone of industrial countries. Today, the volatile environment of the market and the continuous change in customer requirements lead to constant pressure to seek opportunities that properly align and coordinate the different components of the industry. In particular, petroleum refining and petrochemical industry coordination and integration is gaining a great deal of interest. However, previous research in the field either studied the two systems in isolation or assumed limited interactions between them. The aim of this thesis is to provide a framework for the planning, integration and coordination of multisite refinery and petrochemical networks using proper deterministic, stochastic and robust optimization techniques. The contributions of this dissertation fall into three categories; namely, a) Multisite refinery planning, b) Petrochemical industry planning, and c) Integration and coordination of multisite refinery and petrochemical networks. The first part of this thesis tackles the integration and coordination of a multisite refinery network. We first address the design and analysis of multisite integration and coordination strategies within a network of petroleum refineries through a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) technique. The integrated network design specifically addresses intermediate material transfer between processing units at each site. The proposed model is then extended to account for model uncertainty by means of two-stage stochastic programming. Parameter uncertainty was considered and included coefficients of the objective function and right-hand-side parameters in the inequality constraints. Robustness is analyzed based on both model robustness and solution robustness, where each measure is assigned a scaling factor to analyze the sensitivity of the refinery plan and the integration network due to variations. The proposed technique makes use of the sample average approximation (SAA) method with statistical bounding techniques to give an insight on the sample size required to give adequate approximation of the problem. The second part of the thesis addresses the strategic planning, design and optimization of a network of petrochemical processes. We first set up and give an overview of the deterministic version of the petrochemical industry planning model adopted in this thesis. Then we extend the model to address the strategic planning, design and optimization of a network of petrochemical processes under uncertainty and robust considerations. Similar to the previous part, robustness is analyzed based on both model robustness and solution robustness. Parameter uncertainty considered in this part includes process yield, raw material and product prices, and lower product market demand. The Expected Value of Perfect Information (EVPI) and Value of the Stochastic Solution (VSS) are also investigated to numerically illustrate the value of including the randomness of the different model parameters. The final part of this dissertation addresses the integration between the multisite refinery system and the petrochemical industry. We first develop a framework for the design and analysis of possible integration and coordination strategies of multisite refinery and petrochemical networks to satisfy given petroleum and chemical product demand. The main feature of the work is the development of a methodology for the simultaneous analysis of process network integration within a multisite refinery and petrochemical system. Then we extend the petroleum refinery and petrochemical industry integration problem to consider different sources of uncertainties in model parameters. Parameter uncertainty considered includes imported crude oil price, refinery product price, petrochemical product price, refinery market demand, and petrochemical lower level product demand. We apply the sample average approximation (SAA) method within an iterative scheme to generate the required scenarios and provide solution quality by measuring the optimality gap of the final solution.

Petroleum refining and the petrochemical industry account for a major share in the world energy and industrial market. In many situations, they represent the economy back-bone of industrial countries. Today, the volatile environment of the market and the continuous change in customer requirements lead to constant pressure to seek opportunities that properly align and coordinate the different components of the industry. In particular, petroleum refining and petrochemical industry coordination and integration is gaining a great deal of interest. However, previous research in the field either studied the two systems in isolation or assumed limited interactions between them. The aim of this thesis is to provide a framework for the planning, integration and coordination of multisite refinery and petrochemical networks using proper deterministic, stochastic and robust optimization techniques. The contributions of this dissertation fall into three categories; namely, a) Multisite refinery planning, b) Petrochemical industry planning, and c) Integration and coordination of multisite refinery and petrochemical networks. The first part of this thesis tackles the integration and coordination of a multisite refinery network. We first address the design and analysis of multisite integration and coordination strategies within a network of petroleum refineries through a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) technique. The integrated network design specifically addresses intermediate material transfer between processing units at each site. The proposed model is then extended to account for model uncertainty by means of two-stage stochastic programming. Parameter uncertainty was considered and included coefficients of the objective function and right-hand-side parameters in the inequality constraints. Robustness is analyzed based on both model robustness and solution robustness, where each measure is assigned a scaling factor to analyze the sensitivity of the refinery plan and the integration network due to variations. The proposed technique makes use of the sample average approximation (SAA) method with statistical bounding techniques to give an insight on the sample size required to give adequate approximation of the problem. The second part of the thesis addresses the strategic planning, design and optimization of a network of petrochemical processes. We first set up and give an overview of the deterministic version of the petrochemical industry planning model adopted in this thesis. Then we extend the model to address the strategic planning, design and optimization of a network of petrochemical processes under uncertainty and robust considerations. Similar to the previous part, robustness is analyzed based on both model robustness and solution robustness. Parameter uncertainty considered in this part includes process yield, raw material and product prices, and lower product market demand. The Expected Value of Perfect Information (EVPI) and Value of the Stochastic Solution (VSS) are also investigated to numerically illustrate the value of including the randomness of the different model parameters. The final part of this dissertation addresses the integration between the multisite refinery system and the petrochemical industry. We first develop a framework for the design and analysis of possible integration and coordination strategies of multisite refinery and petrochemical networks to satisfy given petroleum and chemical product demand. The main feature of the work is the development of a methodology for the simultaneous analysis of process network integration within a multisite refinery and petrochemical system. Then we extend the petroleum refinery and petrochemical industry integration problem to consider different sources of uncertainties in model parameters. Parameter uncertainty considered includes imported crude oil price, refinery product price, petrochemical product price, refinery market demand, and petrochemical lower level product demand. We apply the sample average approximation (SAA) method within an iterative scheme to generate the required scenarios and provide solution quality by measuring the optimality gap of the final solution.

This research deals with chemical transport Problems involving maritime pick up from and delivery to storage tanks that are continuously filled and drained. More specifically, we developed decision technology to determine the efficient use of multi compartment bulk ships to transport chemical products while ensuring continuous production with no stock-outs, so that the inventory level of chemical products in storage tanks are maintained between prescribed upper and lower stock levels during the planning horizon. Due to the nature of the products, it is impossible to carry more than two products without these being separated into dedicated compartments of the ships. We need to decide how much of each product to carry, on which ship, subject to the conditions that all harbors must have sufficient product to meet demand, and the stock levels of the products cannot exceed the inventory capacity of that harbor. We have formulated this ship-routing problem as a combined multi-ship pickup-delivery problem with inventory constraints. The original problem is a large-scale non-convex mixed-integer programming problem. All non-convexities involved weighted sums of products of two variables, one of which is binary and the other is continuous but bounded. We have shown that the structure gives rise to an equivalent large-scale linear mixed-integer programming problem (MILP). We studied the underlying structure of the MILP and developed a solution strategy by Lagrangian relaxation method for this large scale MILP with special structure. We also devised heuristic methods that are fast and find a good solution and conducted numerical studies that show how good does the heuristic solution compared to the dual bounds.

Due to the high complexity and various values essence, environmental issues need comprehensive and complete observation and analysis tools to find the resolving way. Current environmental management framework cannot provide comprehensive and whole picture of the environment issues because of research area and limited experiences on the cross field integration. This research integrated 3 environment-related frameworks ¡V Integrated Environmental Management framework (EM), Institution Analysis and Development framework (IAD), and Public Affair Management framework (PAM) - into a new integrated framework and use Kuokuang petrochemical plant event as the first case for theoretical identification. 3 original frameworks were analyzed, compared, recombined, and integrated into ¡§New Environmental Management framework (NEM)¡¨ which has the functions of describing the whole picture, building overall idea, underling problems textures and revealing key points of environment issues and supposed to be a new possible option for observing and analyzing environment issues. According to NEM framework, Kuokuang petrochemical plant event was analyzed step by step, such as data interpreting, problems textures filtering and key points revealing. The 4 most important key points affect the development and results of the Kuokuang petrochemical plant event were: development and changing of civil society, limitation and breakthrough of government institutions, conflict and reconciling of the values judgment, and impact and influence of internet.

Singapore gained access to independence sixty years ago. Since then, in order to improve its economic growth, the country went through many economic development plans, and nowadays the success of the past economic policies, made Singapore a diversified economy, where industrial development is its milestone. The Singaporean government and foreign companies played a very important role in the history of its economic development. From the status of colony with a fragile economic structure, to a diversified economy after the independence, industrialization is the cornerstone of Singapore¡¦s economic transformation. Industrialization made Singapore become a newly industrialized country with petrochemical industry as the most important industry. Singapore Economic Development Board was established in 1962, and after its establishment a series of domestic economic planning were implemented. Subsequently, the JTC was created to manage the entire country¡¦s industrial Affairs. Via an efficient planned economy by the governmental institutions, the Jurong Industrial park gradually developed and helped Singapore to reach its industrial development¡¦s objectives. In the process of promoting the development of the petrochemical industry or the global industry, it is evident that Singapore¡¦s government followed the pattern and specificities of the developmental sate, by the combination of economic planning institutions, an outstanding bureaucracy, and Multinational Corporations, Singapore managed to develop the petrochemical industry which became the country¡¦s most important industry.

Abstract Recently, the engineering scale has been generating larger and larger, and the engineering content tends to be more complicated as a result of the rapid development of engineering techniques. There were so many defects incurred in traditional contracting method by separating and entrusting design and construction service work to different contractors. The owner of petrochemical industry therefore tends to adopt ¡§design-build contracts¡¨ in order to reduce engineering management manpower, shorten work duration, clarify engineering obligation and liability, advance engineering quality as well as save engineering cost. Engineering contractors have to go through the proposal preparation process and then the open bid or individual negotiation to bid for ¡§design-build contract¡¨. After being awarded, the successful contractors have to establish the objectives of projects as per contract and exert management expertise to enable the plant-building work being completed on schedule and under the fixed budget. And then hand over the plant to owner in smooth process and achieve the objectives simultaneously. Through literature review, theoretic structure of petrochemical plant¡¦s design-build projects and practical cases, this research integrates the theory of project management and sums up seven management methods as follows: (1) Proposal preparation; (2) Contract signing; (3) Project planning; (4) Project execution; (5) Project control; (6) Handing over engineering; and (7) Project closed-out for engineering contractors. These comprehensive management methods are aimed to achieve the five goals of engineering project, i.e. quality, schedule, cost, safety and the interaction with owner. Finally, the research makes some conclusions and recommendations to which the contractors can refer in undertaking design-build projects in the future.