Yanbu’ Refinery Achieves Diamond Category in Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award

Last week, under the patronage of his Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, the Abu Dhabi Chamber for Commerce & Industry organized the closing ceremony for the 19^th Cycle of Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award, where the participating companies and organizations were recognized through its Diamond, Gold and Silver categories.

Saudi Aramco Yanbu refinery exclusively achieved the diamond category among participants from all sectors making it the first ever Saudi Arabian organization to ever achieve this high score and category in this cycle. The award was received by Saudi Aramco Yanbu Refinery manager Abdulatif S. Al-Shami and delegates from Yanbu Refinery department.

“This is another achievement added to the collection of national and international accomplishments that could have not been achieved without the deep commitment of Yanbu refinery employees to the highest sustainability and performance agility practices, where they were able to maintain an outstanding performance results covering the aspects of Customers, People, Social Responsibility and Main results," said Al-Shami. "Despite the COVID-19 pandemic challenges and exceptional circumstances associated with it, Yanbu refinery was continuing to accomplish unprecedented milestones catalyzed by digital transformation and innovation,” he added.

Outstanding achievement

This outstanding achievement was bestowed after the refinery underwent extensive quality assessment by nine accredited international assessors over two stages. The first was an offline documentation review while the second was a virtual field visit which lasted for three consecutive days in which the assessors have validated the refinery’s documentations and conducted multiple interviews with employees from across all the refinery’s organizations in order to analyze the performance effectiveness to achieve its strategic objectives.

This achievement is a result of Yanbu refinery employees' belief that excellence is an endless journey of continuous improvement efforts to achieve the strategic goals of the organization.

Yanbu refinery journey of Excellence started by achieving international accreditation (ISO) certification to ensure achieving the highest quality standards, going through organizational assessments as well as knowledge and best practices exchange sessions that has opened new perspectives to the organization, and investing on the human resources, encouraging them to innovate and engaging them in setting the business goals which helps to cultivate the ambition to achieve the business strategic goals.

The refinery had clear strategies that included enhancement in several aspects including innovation, social responsibility, digital transformation, cyber security, environment control, energy, safety, quality and others. Those strategies helped the refinery improve its results and achieve stakeholders' satisfaction.

Article written by: Fareed Enani, Raad Mulla, and Ahmed Basodan
Caption of the top photo: Mr. Abdulatif Al-Shami accepting the award with five delegates from Yanbu Refinery (From right to left: Fareed Enani, Fahad Juhani, Ahmed Basodan, Khaled Amoudi, Abdullah Mutairi).