Kuwait Petroleum International (Q8) Netherlands- Brochure

Case Study: bizzApps Enterprise Quality Management at Q8 KPI needed to improve the coordination of quality management activities, and improve remote access to quality data and systems. The Client Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), under its distinctive ‘Q8 sails’ logo, refines and markets fuels, lubricants and other petroleum derivatives to a diverse global customer base. Within Europe over 5,000 staff and more than 4,000 retail service stations, Q8 is a well known, respected and trusted supplier of quality petroleum products. With a direct sales operations delivering fuels and heating oil to domestic and industrial customers, the Q8 International Diesel Service (IDS), which provides road transportation companies throughout Europe with an automated secure fuel card service; and Q8 Aviation, which supplies over 200 airlines at more than 40 airports worldwide with jet fuel. Q8 also operates a number of specialist businesses that deliver quality products to niche sectors, including:, Q8 Oils, which operates four lubricant blending plants, as well as direct sales and marketing activities across Europe and world exports. The Challenge KPI’s research and development arm, Kuwait Petroleum Research and Technology (KP R&T), is responsible for overall Quality Assurance and Quality Control for the organization. In this highly specialized and technical industry, quality control, from the quality of raw materials to its transportation and the refining process itself, are of vital importance. One of KPI’s most important refineries is located in Europoort, the Netherlands, where crude oil from Kuwait is refined into lubricants for use by motorists as well as for industrial applications. Lubricants form an important part of KPI’s overall turnover, so the refinery is Europoort is of key strategic importance to the business. Samples from the refinery are analyzed by KP R&T, which takes responsibility for ensuring the quality of the raw material - crude oil - the refining process, as well as the end products - over 300 different lubricants - all meet the strict specifications and high quality required. “KP R&T expects to increase customer satisfaction by using bizzApps Quality Manager as one of the key building blocks of process improvement,” said Hans Thomassen, Managing Director at KP R&T The Solution bizzApps was selected by KP R&T because the Quality Manager solution was able to address many of KP R&T’s quality management requirements out of the box, such as experimental blending in lubricant research, and proved itself to be readily adaptable so that certain bespoke functions could be met with minor changes to the standard software architecture. KP R&T wanted to establish a central Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) to improve the coordination of activities and data and thereby the overall efficiency of Quality Assurance and Quality Control activities. bizzApps Quality Manager solution was able to provide a system that could comply with the specific requirements of the research and development organization while simultaneously supporting the daily sequence of quality management processes required by the production side of KPI’s business. bizzApps was able to make Quality Manager’s LIMS solution available internally as well as externally using web-services, which enables KP R&T to better track quality management activity throughout the organization as well as respond more quickly and effectively to enquiries from outside the laboratory. The refinery- and KP R&T-employees are now able to input and access quality management data via a standard web-browser, enabling reports and analysis to be undertaken in real-time and quality managed to be viewed as one enterprise-wide process. The Benefits The efficiency and expertise of operations in Europoort and the high quality of crude oil from Kuwait means that KPI now runs one of the top production facilities for lubricant base stocks in the world. As the output of a continuous process like a refinery, it is important to know for which product output is in-spec and therefore which orders can be delivered from the right tank. The multi-spec functionality allows KP R&T to simultaneously test many specifications or to verify that a tank satisfies a certain specification once testing is completed. Quality Manager provides KP R&T with a data communication infrastructure that is securely accessible, if needed from anywhere in the world through a standard and familiar Internet browser interface. All employees can log onto the LIMS on the KP R&T server via the Internet, regardless of the place they are at the refinery. This saves laboratory employees a lot of time because they are not longer continuously interrupted by requests for inspection results. The verification system is able to determine the access rights of individual employees thereby only granting access to functionality aligned to employees’ rights. The quality management system provides real-time, and where needed historical information, on the quality of all the refinery products. This provides the information required to effectively manage the operation of the refinery for manufacturing fuels an many types of lubricants. KPI expects to bizzApps to positively impact customer satisfaction and retention because the organization operates more effectively and is better able to respond to changes in production processes. About bizzApps bizzApps delivers the most comprehensive suite of enterprise quality management solutions available to manufacturing and industrial companies. bizzApps’ provides integrated software solutions that address all aspects of enterprise quality management, from non-conformance management to supplier management, inspection management and LIMS. bizzApps’ solutions are highly process-centric solution and can be adapted to the very specific quality management needs of any company, whether in the discrete manufacturing or the process manufacturing sector. Headquartered in The Netherlands, bizzApps combines over 20 years of industry expertise with a strong customer commitment to deliver business value to over 100 customers worldwide. 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