PBL Providing Lasting Return at BP Cooper River
PBL Providing Lasting Return at BP Cooper River
Mark Fitts, Plant Manager at BP Cooper River, discusses the long-lasting benefits of using Process Based Leadership® to run efficient operations.
The Challenge
Following a major merger between Amoco and BP, the organization faced several daunting challenges with a mix of backgrounds and cultures coming from BP, Amoco, ARCO and Castrol. They soon realized the need to transition from self-directed work teams to more of an accountability-driven operating system.
Just outside of Charleston, South Carolina, the BP Cooper River facility sits on over 5900 acres of forest and wetlands, making it one of the world’s largest purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plants. With such a large site their four rotating production shifts faced a variety of challenges, such as:
Communicating important, timely business information to all employees at all levels
Establishing a common organizational culture
Integrating a corrective action process into daily operations
In 2008, BP began a journey to standardize operations and blend the various cultures into one cohesive operating unit. They launched the OMS (Operating Management System) program to more tightly align all operations and cultures. Fortunately, prior to beginning their implementation of the OMS program the BP Cooper River site had fully established a process-driven culture with Process Based Leadership®. Having the process-driven foundation proved invaluable when transitioning to OMS.
The Solution
Phase 1 – Following an initial assessment of BP Cooper River operations, CSI delivered Process Based Leadership® training with a focus on creating a standardized communication process which was then tightly integrated with a corrective actions process tool called an Action Register. They also created and refined scorecards that connected all leaders and teams from Site Leadership all the way down to the Front Line Leaders, which helped establish a common business language.
Phase 2 – As mandated by BP Corporate offices, the Cooper River facility tackled the task of implementing the new OMS program.
The Results
With Process Based Leadership® being firmly embedded into their daily operating culture, Mark has seen substantial, measurable results with improving communication effectiveness and flow, increasing employee engagement and accountability, and discovering root causes when goals are not met.
Mark Fitts explains, “When OMS launched in early 2008, every BP entity had to make an official transition to this new system. In Q3 2008, Cooper River became the first entity to make the full transition, and it is a direct result of having PBL as the foundation behind how we manage processes and procedures, use action registers and scorecards. The strong PBL foundation made this transition very easy. We are regarded as the company-wide leader and used as a benchmark entity for Safety, Operations, Cost, Continuous Improvement and Leadership.”
In September 2011, Cooper River was officially selected as the Exemplar Site in Refining and Marketing in terms of their implementation and mastering of BP’s Operating Management Systems. This equates to BP Cooper River being seen as the OMS leader in the organization and now gives them the opportunity to lead change and teach other locations how it’s done.
UPDATE: In November 2011, BP Cooper River won two top awards at a ceremony in London. “We won both the Safety Excellence Helios Award and the BP Best of the Best Helios Award. This was the tenth year for the Group Helios Awards and we were the first team to ever win two distinct awards. I would say that a big contributor to our great workforce culture is the result of our Process Based Leadership training. I take pride in that [CSI] helped us create an environment of trust, teamwork, and accountability.”, proclaims Mark Fitts.
Measurable Improvements
Better Understanding of the Business. Employees now have a much clearer picture of how their team is contributing to the overall success and advancement of the business. With standard, non-negotiable meetings employees are able to keep informed of critical news, changes in operations, events affecting their contributions to the bottom line, and the ability to make suggestions or ask clarifying questions of senior leaders.
Process Integration. By integrating Action Registers and scorecards into every meeting, each team can maintain focus on the areas in need of improvement. When necessary, a root cause analysis can be conducted, actions assigned, and then later discussed in a future meeting.
Making Corrections and Getting More Accomplished. BP Cooper River has effectively reduced confusion and decreased meeting times by making quicker decisions and then allowing employees to make those corrections outside of their meetings. With 10 years of experience using Action Registers, they even developed a fully integrated task tracking tool, called IT3 Cubed.
Mark commented, “With IT3 Cubed we have taken accountability to a whole other level.”
