Any supervisor should excel at:

• Monitoring and reviewing information from materials, events, or the environment.
• Detecting or assessing problems whether real or potential.
• Monitoring and controlling resources and overseeing the spending of money.

Controllers are expected to be good at:

• Using either control mechanisms or direct physical activity to operate manufacturing systems.
• Working with hand operated industrial machines and power tools.
• Adjusting knobs, levers, and physical or touch sensitive buttons in industrial devices.
• Running, maneuvering, navigating, or driving vehicles or mechanized equipment, such as forklifts, passenger vehicles, aircraft, or watercraft.

• Monitoring the processes indicators, instruments, gauges, and meters for detecting and reporting any possible problems.
• Starting pumps and opening valves or using automated equipment to regulating the flow of oil in pipelines and into and out of tanks.
• Controlling or operating manifold and pumping systems to circulate liquids through a petroleum refinery.
• Operating controlling panels for coordinating and regulating the processes variables such as temperature and pressure, and for directing product flow rate, according to the processes schedules.
• Signaling other workers by telephone or radio for operating pumps, opening and closing valves, and checking temperatures.
• Verifying that incoming and outgoing products are moving through the adequate meters, and that meters are working properly.
• Reading automatic gauges at specified intervals for determining the flow rate of oil into or from tanks, and the amount of oil in tanks.
• Operating auxiliary equipment and controlling multiple processing units during distilling or treating operations, moving controls that regulating valves, pumps, compressors, and auxiliary equipment.