Today, every company desires a smooth functioning of operations. The complexity of the market is pushed up by a huge number of customers. The cryogenic gas suppliers supply Industrial and medical gasses via tankers and cylinders. Certain gasses play a crucial role in the running of various industries. These industries range from steel and metal, shipyard and automotive, plastics, packaging and scrap tires to the chemical industry. These tankers circulate across the supply chain through various channel partners – warehouses, consumers and back to the business unit for refilling.
For the delivery of cryogenic liquid gas, industrial gas suppliers make colossal investments in the cylinders. Each cylinder costs around $200 to the cryogenic supplier. Due to this, it becomes indispensable to utilize these assets in an efficient way. Monitoring these cylinders becomes a labyrinthine task because of numerous factors. These factors are different gasses that are being manufactured, various dealers and number of assets. Due to lack of proper tracking, mostly gas cylinder suppliers lose 1-2% of their assets annually.
In the supply chain process, cylinders need to go for testing periodically. The record of the delivery of each cylinder needs maintenance for complete safety and regulatory purposes. In such a situation, everyday glitches can disrupt the smooth functioning of operations and hamper the process.
Let’s address the glitches that cryogenic gas suppliers face daily and the solutions to escape them.
Addressing Glitches
Today, the system of tracking is inaccurate and inefficient. Barcodes are handicapped, as often they become unreadable due to the harsh environment. Moreover, to be read it requires a direct line of sight. As a result, cylinders remain underutilized.
It is problematic to categorize cylinders delivered to the customers and owned by the suppliers.
It becomes difficult to decide which cylinders can still be used to transport gas and which ones need to undergo testing and maintenance. Due to this, a big safety issue can occur.
Discovering the cause of the assets’ damage is difficult. It is complicated to identify if the damage had happened at customer’s site or during the delivery.
Manpower employed for manually recording cylinders’ details has proved to be expensive, less efficient and a time-consuming process. It produces manual data entry errors that lead to loss of productivity.
Audit of cylinders is a strenuous task as gas suppliers have to penetrate into the data records to spot the cylinders owned by them.
Inaccuracy in the records goes one step further when the lost or purloined cylinders are not reported in the system.
Fixing Glitches
Industrial Gas Cylinder Management
RFID Times
RFID is the best system for accurate tracking. They overcome the disadvantages of a barcode. A unique microchip is assembled in the RFID tags that are affixed to the cylinders. They do not require a direct line of sight to be read and are rooted in a shielded high impact resistant cover that can resist the extreme environment. As a result, the cylinders do not go underutilized.
Unbelievable data capturing for received and delivered cylinders
When all the cylinders contain RFID tags, data capturing becomes easy. The empty cylinders are returned from the consumers to the cryogenic gas suppliers. Those empty cylinders have RFID tags that can be read employing GPRS enabled RFID readers. The reader can scan a number of RFID tags in one go.
The cylinders that are empty are loaded in the truck and transported to the warehouse. The data for those cylinders are captured in an unbelievable way by the RFID reader. It is then automatically downloaded and updated in the system of the warehouse.
Fortunately, this reduces human effort used for manual entries. The data captured is accurate, recorded cost-effectively and within less time. Even that 1-2% chance of losing the company’s assets is eliminated.
Trakaid’s LgMonitor
Trakaid’s LgMonitor employs telemetry technology and sensing devices that sense, transmit, collect and process information in real time. Liquid gas monitoring solution provides industrial gas suppliers real-time, rich dynamic cloud-based reports, rule-based reports and a notification engine.
Easy refilling due to proper specifications
Unlike barcodes, RFID tags have the read/write capability and can store all the specifications. These specifications are the serial number, weight, filling time, issue date, dispatch date, refilling data of cylinders and more. The scanners scan the RFID tags of the cylinders and update the data in the server. The specifications on the tag enable an alarm to be raised for cylinder testing before refilling. Due to this, the safety of employees and consumers are maintained, and trust is built.
Finally, RFID cylinder tracking provides error-free auto updating of the details of the cylinders into the system. You get accuracy in your data with minimized effort and reduced labor expense. Cylinder tracking is enhanced by a hundred times. Within seconds, the cylinders stored in the warehouse are counted.
Such a gas monitoring system enables real-time visibility of the cylinder’s location. It provides an operator free process of gas cylinder filling. The cylinders will be no more lost or stolen. The cylinders are no more credited to the wrong account. The complete safety of workers and consumers is ensured.
The delivery process is simplified, and the rentals are automatically calculated by the system. Moreover, maintenance of the assets prevent unplanned revenue hike by minimizing the turnaround time. As a result, cryogenic gas cylinder suppliers can eliminate losses, increase the productivity and escape from glitches of the daily life.