At Reuters Momentum AI Conference, Tandra Perkins outlined how Phillips 66 is applying AI across its integrated business model to empower employees, enhance performance and drive results
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SUMMARY
- Phillips 66’s Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Administrative Officer Tandra Perkins, offers insight into how the company is using AI to improve operations, build an AI-confident workforce and create measurable business value.
- From predictive maintenance and leak detection to commercial decision support, AI applications are helping employees work more efficiently and effectively across the value chain.
When Perkins took the stage at the Reuters Momentum AI Conference, her message was clear: The strongest AI outcomes result from combining technology with the knowledge, judgment and experience of employees.
“AI is really the amplifier to open up space to create more value, create more opportunity for our people and the company,” Perkins said during her keynote address.
Why it matters
By connecting data, insights and expertise across planning, operations and commercial activities, Phillips 66 is helping teams respond more quickly to changing conditions, improve performance and capture opportunities across the value chain.
Connected intelligence
AI technologies across the company are helping employees make better decisions, accelerate execution and deliver stronger results with tools like:
- Predictive maintenance in refining.
- Leak detection supported by satellite and drone imagery in midstream.
- Faster evaluation of fuel station branding in marketing.
The strategy centers around a unifying idea: connected intelligence.
The approach
The process starts with the people closest to the work. Phillips 66 teams identify a meaningful business challenge, work with frontline employees to design and refine a solution and then scale it after it proves effective.
The outcome
Perkins noted that the company measures success by linking AI initiatives to business outcomes such as earnings, operational availability, maintenance costs, safety and environmental performance.
AI-ready workforce
Phillips 66 is treating AI fluency as a long-term business capability — not a one-time technology initiative.
It is building employee confidence through AI Central, an enterprise platform that connects company intelligence and automates work, with adoption reaching up to 80% across the company.
Trust, Perkins said, is foundational to AI adoption. Employees need a safe space to innovate with clear governance and guardrails. By giving employees room to learn, share use cases and apply AI to practical challenges, Phillips 66 is building confidence in a technology designed to amplify their expertise and create capacity for higher-value work and innovation.
Plan-Operate-Trade
The company’s Plan-Operate-Trade model brings the connected intelligence approach to life through a suite of integrated platforms helping employees evaluate options faster, anticipate risks, identify opportunities and take coordinated action.
Planning with precision
AI helps teams analyze changing market conditions, evaluate feedstock and supply options, and model potential scenarios to optimize scheduling decisions. These capabilities support margin optimization and strengthen the company’s competitive position.
Operating with insight
Across operations, AI transforms large volumes of data into actionable insights that help teams improve reliability, optimize performance and identify opportunities before they become challenges. This faster, proactive approach to asset management supports safe, reliable operations and environmental stewardship.
Trading with confidence
AI helps commercial teams connect operational intelligence with market signals to assess risk, capture opportunities and make informed decisions in minutes.
Trading with confidence
Beyond the conference stage, company leaders see the approach taking shape in employees’ day-to-day work. “We’re weaving AI into the fabric of how our employees already do their jobs, from the refinery unit to the trading desk,” said James Ross, senior vice president, chief information officer.
“Human-centered is a core design principle,” he added. “Use cases we build are designed to take tedious, repetitive work off employees’ plates so they can spend more time on the decisions that require human judgment, expertise and accountability to drive the business forward.”
Together, these efforts are helping build an AI-confident workforce prepared for the future. “Our ambition is simple,” said Perkins. “We want to unleash the full potential of our people to create value, accelerate innovation and compete to win.”
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