Digital Exclusive: From safety silos to strategic insights: Digitally transforming SIS management

A. SUMMERS, President and CEO, SIS-TECH

When it comes to digital transformation, refining and processing operators face unique challenges. Unlike other industries already leveraging digital twins to improve design, enable predictive maintenance and boost operational efficiency, the refining and processing sectors often struggle with data management.

Many facilities have accumulated vast quantities of data over decades, some dating back more than half a century. This data is often scattered across departments, locked in outdated formats and managed by tools from different generations. Such fragmentation makes digital transformation complex, as updating one document can render others outdated, creating uncertainty about which version is accurate.

“Everyone is looking to digitalization, but in refining, it is not that simple,” says Nagappan Muthiah, P.E, CFSE, Phillips 66 Safety Instrumented Systems Lead, Industrial Control Systems.

Muthiah and his team were tasked with leading the digital transformation of Phillips 66’s safety instrumented systems (SIS) (FIG. 1). Their mission: identify the best way to consolidate decades of dispersed and inconsistent safety data into a smarter, more practical system. This innovative solution aims to eliminate data silos, deliver enterprise-wide visibility and bring greater clarity to safety lifecycle management.

FIG. 1. Phillips 66 made a strategic decision to reorient its digitalization efforts around SIS during the operations and maintenance (O&M) phase, where proactive decisions directly impact reliability, uptime and safety.

The reality of digitalization in refining. Phillips 66, headquartered in Houston, Texas (U.S.) operates nine refineries and initially set out to pursue full lifecycle digitalization when it began its digital journey > 5 yr ago. This would allow it to replicate its entire safety system digitally from front-end design through to commissioning. In theory, the process would deliver enormous savings in both time and money: design one unit, press a button and replicate it across sites. 

“As much as it was intellectually satisfying to conceptualize the digitization of the entire process—including front-end design to operation and maintenance—we quickly realized that the return on investment (ROI) just wasn’t there,” adds Muthiah.

The true opportunity was not digitizing front-end design data, but rather focusing on the operations, maintenance and safety performance data of the existing assets.

This approach aligned with guidance from the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) Recommended Practice 754, which classifies safety metrics into four tiers.¹ While Tier 1 and Tier 2 reflect incidents that have already occurred, Tier 3 metrics function as leading indicators, revealing that a safety protection system was activated to prevent a potential event.

“Before we started utilizing our proprietary functional safety lifecycle tool^a, our safety data lived in siloed digital formats,” explains Muthiah. “You could read it—but tracking, comparing or integrating this safety design basis was much harder.”

From documentation to real-time decision support. Phillips 66’s safety lifecycle tool^a was developed by the author’s company, a Houston, Texas (U.S.)-based engineering firm specializing in process safety management, instrumentation and electrical systems. Originally created to calculate the probability of failure on demand (PFD) and spurious trip rate (STR) for process facility equipment, the software has evolved into a fully integrated safety management platform. It supports the entire SIS process—from design and documentation to compliance and governance—enabling digital transformation, eliminating data silos and providing consistent visibility across the enterprise.

The secure, cloud-based architecture of the functional safety lifecycle tool^a allowed Phillips 66 to centralize all SIS data across its refining assets. Rather than managing static reports in disconnected systems, teams now work within a dynamic environment where safety data can be filtered, analyzed and compared across units and facilities (FIG. 2). Updates made in one area are automatically reflected across all related documentation, ensuring accuracy and alignment from field operations to corporate safety audits.

FIG. 2. The author’s company’s functional safety lifecycle tool^a report interface quickly shows users where projects stand: green indicates completed work, yellow shows incomplete tasks and grey represents work that has not started.

“It was a paradigm shift—going from exchanging documents to exchanging data,” says Muthiah. “Suddenly, we could slice, dice and act on our safety insights.”

The functional safety lifecycle tool^a enables Phillips 66 to compare safety integrity level (SIL) ratings across similar systems, standardize processes and ask deeper operational questions: Why does one refinery require more SIL 2 functions than another? Is the risk profile accurate, or are assumptions misaligned? What about this outlier data?

With its SIS data structured and centralized, Phillips 66 is now uncovering patterns that were previously hidden.

Strategic alignment with industry direction. The ongoing efforts to access, analyze and visualize SIS data in aggregate are helping Phillips 66 become increasingly proactive in its safety management. As this work progresses, the company’s teams are beginning to identify systemic issues and risk clusters, moving beyond merely addressing isolated failures.

“When you zoom out and leverage relevant data, you move beyond addressing isolated issues and start resolving the root causes within the entire system,” adds Muthiah.

Phillips 66’s SIS digital transformation aligns with the Industry 4.0 Maturity Index developed by the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) in Germany.² The framework outlines six stages of digital maturity:

• Stage 1: Computerization—Digitization of analog systems
• Stage 2: Connectivity—Systems and data connected across departments, enabling communication
• Stage 3: Visibility—Real-time insights into what is happening
• Stage 4: Transparency—Root-cause analysis explains why things are happening
• Stage 5: Predictability—Anticipating outcomes of future issues or performance
• Stage 6: Adaptability—Autonomous response to changing conditions.

After several years of focused effort—and with the right tools now in place—Phillips 66 sees itself firmly in Stage 2 and advancing toward Stage 3. At that level, the functional safety lifecycle tool^a will enable the comparison of “evergreen” static safety design data, which reflects how systems should operate, with real-time operational data from the field, to generate Tier 3 metrics aligned with API-752.¹ The next step, Stage 4, is where Muthiah his team believe real efficiencies will begin to emerge.

“We believe Stage 4 will be a sweet spot—where digitally mapped data helps us make decisions not just based on theoretical analysis, but on real-world analytics that further improve our safety and reliability,” adds Muthiah.

From data-driven safety to operational excellence. For Phillips 66, future goals include extending insights from SIS into equipment protection systems (EPSs), where greater digital transparency can enhance both safety and plant efficiency. As operational data continues to mature, the company expects to make even more impactful, real-time decisions (FIG. 3).

FIG. 3. Phillips 66’s safety lifecycle tool^a was developed by the author’s company to support the entire SIS process—from design and documentation to compliance and governance.

“The next step would be to expand the applications to include asset protection and production loss,” explains Muthiah. “If a piece of equipment is tripping, there is a safety aspect—but also a commercial one. If your unit is down, you are not making money. By looking at the metrics, we expect to improve uptime.”

Rather than attempting a sweeping overhaul, Phillips 66 took a targeted, outcome-driven approach to digital transformation. In doing so, the company transitioned from fragmented, document-heavy SIS management to a streamlined, data-centric platform. The results: greater efficiency, compliance validation and enterprise-wide visibility. The company’s journey offers a practical model for how legacy-heavy industries can evolve with clarity, purpose and measurable impact.

“We’re not trying to digitalize for digitalization’s sake,” concludes Muthiah. “We’re focused on what improves safety and reliability—period.”

NOTES

^a SIS-TECH’s SIL Solver^® Enterprise

LITERATURE CITED

¹ American Petroleum Institute’s (API) Recommended Practice 754, “Process safety performance indicators for the refining and petrochemical industries,” online:  https://www.api.org/oil-and-natural-gas/health-and-safety/refinery-and-plant-safety/process-safety/process-safety-standards/rp-754

² Schuh, G., et al., “Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index: Managing the digital transformation of companies,” National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), April 22, 2020, online: https://en.acatech.de/publication/industrie-4-0-maturity-index-update-2020/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angela Summers—the founder, president and CEO of SIS-TECH—is a licensed Professional Engineer with more than 30 yr of experience in instrumentation and controls, process design and environmental pollution. Dr. Summers holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Alabama and is key contributor to industry standards from the International Society of Automation (ISA), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and others.

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