The strategic importance of teaching Operations Research for achieving high performance in the petroleum refining business

• The petroleum industry is currently a very complex, dynamic and competitive business.
• Operational Research was taught in the industrial environment.
• Refinery planners/schedulers acquired practical skills on large-scale optimization.
• Learners became technically enabled and motivated to rethink work processes.

Introducing a good educational program in the industrial environment may importantly differ from implementing a well-taught course in academic settings in a number of aspects. Potential troublesome aspects should be identified in advance such that the learning environment can properly tackle those issues through specialized or innovative ways. In this paper, we highlight the key role of Operations Research (OR) for the modern, high-performing oil industry and describe the in-house implementation of a pioneer, corporate-wide strategic learning program on OR techniques at PETROBRAS, a semi-public Brazilian multinational energy company. The learners were chemical engineers working at the planning/scheduling department of oil refineries, which has a high profile in the organization. Under tutoring, they acquired theoretical knowledge and practical skills concerning the development of optimization models, solution techniques and finished OR-based tools in a community of OR experts, thereby enabling them to rehearse their reflective and computational skills related to day-to-day activities. Most importantly, since aimed to foster the development of self-regulated, reflective learners, this course technically enabled and motivated planners and schedulers to develop further specialization, to rethink inefficient work processes, to change the attitudes and culture in the refinery, to question previous assumptions and operational paradigms.