Optimize asset usage

On the other hand, companies make huge investment in this key returnable asset that is critical to their success. Typically for every dollar invested in the asset, a company needs to recoup 25 percent annually of the cost of the cylinder to cover its depreciation, interest, usability, and maintenance. To survive and thrive, full asset utilization and visibility throughout the rotation cycle are critical. Full-proof tracking becomes essential. Cylinder usability- safety and operational status for appropriate use, Cylinder visibility – tracking and tracing its availability and location at any given time is critical and have direct impact on business productivity and the bottom-line.

People in the industry know that reading, writing and entering cylinder data take up much of their workers’ time and that people are not available anymore for this tedious error prone work. On top of this, the process is repeated multiple times during receiving, filling, issuing, and tracking. To start with around 15% of manual entries are incorrect. But this sets a chain reaction with the result that neither you nor your customer trusts your data. In a business that depends on accurate tracking of individual cylinders, errors can cause the cylinder to become lost faster; have a negative impact on productivity and results in big losses to the bottom line.

Most errors are made during delivery wrong cylinder delivered to wrong customer with possible wrong valve type or pressure makes cylinder worthless. No actionable data available to the logistics team – including valve detail, test due, cylinder recall, and customer outstanding. If physical damage data is collected, no mechanism is in place to transmit it automatically to operations at the plant in order to embargo cylinder for service.

Ultimately, lack of up-to-date data results in the inability to easily locate assets and in the lack of readily available information about an asset’s operational status when it is most needed.

Challenges

• Increased operation time and lost productivity due to cylinder identification issues.
• Loss of cylinders from improper identification directly negates your bottom line.
• Underutilization of cylinders due to inefficient and inaccurate tracking methods.
• Inability to isolate cylinders due for scheduled maintenance and testing.
• Safety of one and all is impacted as cylinders are not tested when required.
• Difficulty in reading cylinder number: missing – illegible – poor lighting – non-readable bar code.
• Human error in reading and writing cylinder numbers, including number transposition errors.
• Time inefficiencies reconciling discrepancies in customer’s and company’s cylinder holding records.
• Inability to identify when and where of cylinder damage and attribute it to a customer.
• Cylinder asset management, audit, and periodic census is time consuming and difficult, resulting in an inability to locate individual cylinders.