Phillips 66 Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Administrative Officer Tandra Perkins outlined at the Momentum AI Conference how the company is applying AI across its integrated business model to empower employees, enhance performance and drive measurable results. “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.
By connecting data, insights and expertise across planning, operations and commercial activities, Phillips 66 says its AI work helps teams respond more quickly to changing conditions, improve performance and capture opportunities across the value chain.
AI-powered connected intelligence
AI applications are being used across the business to help employees make better decisions, accelerate execution and deliver stronger results. Examples cited by Perkins include predictive maintenance in refining, leak detection supported by satellite and drone imagery in midstream, and faster evaluation of fuel station branding in marketing. The company describes this unifying approach as “connected intelligence.”
From frontline design to scaled solutions
Perkins described a process that starts with the people closest to the work: teams identify a meaningful business challenge, work with frontline employees to design and refine a solution, and then scale it after it proves effective.
Measuring business outcomes
Phillips 66 links AI initiatives to business outcomes when judging success, tracking metrics such as earnings, operational availability, maintenance costs, safety and environmental performance.
Building an AI-ready workforce
The company treats AI fluency as a long-term business capability. An enterprise platform called AI Central connects company intelligence and automates work, with adoption reaching up to 80% across the company. Perkins said trust is foundational to adoption: employees need a safe space to innovate with clear governance and guardrails so they can learn, share use cases and apply AI to practical challenges that amplify their expertise and create capacity for higher-value work.
Plan-Operate-Trade in practice
The Plan-Operate-Trade model brings connected intelligence to life through integrated platforms. In planning, AI helps analyze changing market conditions, evaluate feedstock and supply options, and model scenarios to optimize scheduling decisions and support margin optimization. In operations, AI converts large volumes of data into actionable insights to improve reliability, optimize performance and identify issues before they become challenges. In trading, AI connects operational intelligence with market signals so commercial teams can assess risk, capture opportunities and make informed decisions in minutes.
Beyond the stage, company leaders say AI is being woven into 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.”
Perkins said the ambition is simple: “We want to unleash the full potential of our people to create value, accelerate innovation and compete to win.”
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