In the oil-and-gas industry alone, the average age of the domestic worker is 50, and according to the Journal of Petroleum Technology , 60% of plant engineers will retire by 2010. And younger workers previously relied upon to take the reins are becoming alarmingly scarce.

With the negative image fostered by layoffs and downturns, the industry is experiencing a persistent shortage of new graduates combining strong technical abilities with "soft skills," such as communications, teamwork, and management. Only 5% of U.S. undergraduates earn engineering degrees, compared with 20% in Japan, Germany, Korea, and France, and 45% in China.

Beyond the challenge of retaining and recruiting employees, refiners must also equip current employees to adopt new roles and levels of responsibility. Like the rest of the world, the refining industry is entering a new economy with new competitive standards. Traditionally, refining companies competed primarily on productivity and price. A new economy, however, requires additional competitive standards: quality, variety, customization, convenience, and timeliness.

In response, traditional roles of people responsible for operating the refinery have changed, and become much broader. New refinery workers have increased responsibilities and skill requirements that are not necessarily job-specific—they are both more competitive and more technically sophisticated, and have the ability to impact the bottom line directly by their actions.

Research performed by the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium (a research and development consortium of 11 companies and universities concerned about the negative effects of industrial plant incidents; www.asmconsortium.com) found that 42% of abnormal situations studied among member companies could be attributed to people and work context factors. The greatest contributors to this figure were inadequate or missing procedures, inadequate or incorrect actions, or failure to follow instructions or proper procedures. According to ASM, these unexpected disruptions are thought to cost 3-8% of capacity, and $10 billion in annual lost production in the U.S. petrochemical industry alone.

For nearly 30 years, distributed control systems (DCS) systems have provided the framework for managing plant processes. A drawback of these traditional systems is that much of the knowledge about the system's operation—critical process parameters, symptom/fault information, and maintenance schedules—doesn't reside within the system itself, but in the minds, notebooks, and files of the facility's operators, technicians, and engineers. When these people leave an organization, much of the knowledge leaves with them. Newer technology provides ways to systematically capture process knowledge in a useful, accessible format.

Let's look at a real-world example of how technology might impact a typical refinery operation, like switching feed to the crude unit.

In the case of a crude change, the operations personnel on duty at the console would drill down through the displays to focus on the operating areas where the crude change physically takes place, in this case the atmospheric distillation and vacuum distillation units.

Drilling down into the graphic, the operator sees a detailed look at the units affected during the crude change procedure (see "Refinery crude oil processing" graphic). The crude switch operations procedure is embedded in the system and is automatically displayed on the console, as part of the automated process operations system (see "Crude switch operations" graphic).

The checklist defines the steps in the crude change procedure and gives the operator the ability to drill down into each task for more detailed procedures and recommendations. For example, PA (pump around) can be a challenge during manual switch over, so the console operator may drill further into the steps listed to be certain the steps are communicated to the field resources, and followed correctly.

In this basic example, the process knowledge embedded in the automation system enables operations staff to better communicate with the field and coordinate the procedures more precisely with each resource involved. It also provides access to knowledge and experience in well-documented and accessible procedures associated with current plant operations.

And in the event of trouble, the system has embedded procedures to help operations resources deal with unexpected problems safely and quickly (see "Crude switch common problems" graphic). As the crude change procedure is implemented, the system displays a quick reference list of problems common to this type of procedure, again with ability to drill down into each for suggested actions to be taken.

By capturing safe operating procedures and experiences of similar operating conditions (historically contained primarily in the minds of more experienced workers), the system effectively augments tools available to operators, allowing them to focus on tasks at hand in a safe, reliable, and consistent manner.

As the aging workforce retires, solutions that embody knowledge capture and sharing provide means to retain learned information, so that the next generation of workers does not live in a "trial-by-fire" environment.

Therefore, leading companies in all industries are turning to knowledge management applications built on platforms that support email systems, Web portals, and interactive workspaces to rescue expertise from retiring workers.

The evolving role of technology in the refinery does not necessarily mean a reduction in human involvement. Instead, the increased complexity in work calls for a proportionate increase in the quality of technical and human components.

Many refiners are achieving improved results by significantly increasing the number and quality of the mental "tools" available to operators, along with concentrated training on effective tool use. When dealing with huge volumes of data, it becomes more important to weed out extraneous noise and focus intently on critical information. Adding ability to embed work practices and procedures in the way operators perform their jobs day-to-day can greatly improve ability of less experienced operators to respond appropriately—in normal operations or during an unexpected incident.