SNAPSHOT
Customer: Calcasieu Refining CompanyIndustry: Petroleum Refining Region: Louisiana, U.S. Gulf Coast Use cases: BLISS LIMS, BLISS SQC+, Laboratory Efficiency, Multi-department Data Access
About Calcasieu Refining Company
Calcasieu Refining Company is a topping unit refinery in South Lake Charles, Louisiana. The refinery processes crude oil and splits it into six different feedstocks for other companies, including kerosene blendstock that customers sell as jet fuel. When James Waite joined as lab supervisor, the lab was running entirely on Excel spreadsheets. That worked well enough at smaller volumes, but as the refinery grew, the limitations became harder to ignore.
"We felt a need to transition from Excel spreadsheets to something more automated, something digital that we could search back in the history of the data to find trends. That was very cumbersome to do with Excel spreadsheets."
A recommendation from a neighboring local refinery that had already been running BLISS LIMS pointed them in the right direction. Waite visited their facility, saw the system in action, and knew it would work for what Calcasieu needed.
Growing Into the System
When Calcasieu first implemented LIMS, the refinery was processing around 70,000 to 75,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Over the years, they brought on vacuum units, added heaters to their main unit, and steadily expanded capacity. Today the refinery runs at around 130,000 to 134,000 barrels per day. Through all of that growth, the lab system kept pace without any special reconfiguration.
That kind of quiet reliability matters in a refinery environment. Lab supervisors are not looking for a system that needs constant attention as operations scale. Calcasieu needed something that would grow with them, and after 13 years on the platform, it has.
Value to Operations
The clearest measure of value James Waite points to is what changed for the people making operational decisions. Before BLISS, when management needed historical data, they called the lab.
"They would call the lab supervisor, me, and say, 'Hey, I need a spreadsheet for this result going back six months. Can you get me a graph by Monday?' And it's Friday afternoon. That meant going through 120 days of spreadsheets, writing down a result on a different spreadsheet and then doing the graph. It took forever."
After the third time working through a weekend to produce a single report, Waite made the case to his manager that there had to be a better way. Now, when someone needs that same report, the answer is four clicks, "It's literally four clicks and they have their graphs rather than 12 hours of sitting at the desk writing down numbers on a Saturday."
Waite made the case to his manager that there had to be a better way. Now, when someone needs that same report, the answer is "four clicks".
Beyond reporting, the instrument integration changed the day-to-day accuracy of the data itself. Results that previously had to be written down by hand and typed into a spreadsheet now flow directly from the instruments into LIMS. Transcription errors dropped significantly.
Waite also uses the SQC charts daily to monitor instrument performance. Seeing a result plotted against historical data the moment it comes in means problems get caught early.
"I can see the trends on the SQC charts and know that I need to work on an instrument fairly quickly before we start having a real issue. For the lab tech to be able to have that tool, all it takes is a glance once they put in the result and they know, 'Oh, that can't be right. Let me check that.' That to me is priceless."
Why They Chose Datacor and Why They Stayed
The initial decision came down to a peer recommendation and a site visit. But the reason Calcasieu has stayed on the platform for over a decade comes down to something else.
"Datacor (formerly Baytek) have always tried to improve their product every step of the way, and that's something that's really appreciated by the end user. The improvements that can be made while you're still using the same program, or buying an upgrade to a new version, that matters."
For Waite, the relationship with the Datacor team has been as important as the software itself.
"The Datacor staff is real easy to work with. They want to be partners with us and we really feel that as an end user." His advice to anyone still on the fence is straightforward: "If you're on the fence about getting it, I don't see a reason why you wouldn't get it."
Schedule a free consultation with Datacor BLISS Laboratory experts today.
