Fulfilling Multinational Energy Corporation’s Business Goals with a Custom-built Lean Terminal Management System
INDUSTRY
Oil & Gas
REVENUE
Privately Held
At a Glance
The IT industry and its many players boast an expansive plethora of software products and solutions with an enormous list of features and functionalities, compute power, pricing models, etc. While it is great to have options, what if a client seeks a lean but solidly built solution that provides the required functionality without all the bells and whistles that the industry tends to assume are needed or wanted? Here is how Multinational Energy Corporation (MEC), a global mid- and downstream oil corporation, built a lean Terminal Management System to solve critical challenges in its remote operations.
About our Client and their Challenges
Multinational Energy Corporation is involved in refining, storing, supplying, and retailing diverse petroleum products. With operations in over 47 countries, their network consists of hundreds of storage terminals, 3000+ retail locations, and over 80 airports. However, with its global scale of operations, they were challenged with heavy manual intervention for terminal management.
MEC’s rural and remotely located terminals across Africa and Latin America were especially affected due to reduced network connectivity and restricted technical infrastructure. Their employees manually performed order fulfillment, inventory management, and document generation across terminals. Subsequently, terminal operations were labor-intensive, time-consuming, and error prone which impacted staff collaboration, productivity, and efficiency. These locations thus, required a software system that could run on fewer resources and limited funds. They needed a custom, cost-effective, automated and lean Terminal Management System (TMS) to support operations effectively.
The ‘Terminal Management System (TMS)’ acts as the pulse of an oil and gas organization. While its exact scope may depend on the scale of the organization, typically, a TMS supports operational functions including managing inventory, tank farms, loading and unloading of freight, safety & compliance, meeting regulatory measures, terminal maintenance, reporting, etc. Its absence or downtime can cause significant operational, safety, environmental, and compliance challenges. Without a functional TMS in MEC’s African and Latin American locations, they faced a major issue of manually intensive email communications, order fulfillment, and document generation.
Our experts uncovered their technological challenge while working with MEC on their data lake and visualization needs. As their trusted IT Partner we designed and developed a lightweight and ‘Lean TMS’ that offered the limited functionality they required within their desired budget.
Delivering Big Benefits in a Small Package
The journey started by shortlisting the most essential features and functionalities needed. The TMS needed to be optimized to meet the following criteria:
- Reduced technological footprint
- Standardized data formats and automated data entry at terminal stations
- Automated operations for order fulfillment and document generation
- Ability to support the solution with limited funds
- Reduced cost, time, and manual effort
- Improved speed, efficiency, and productivity of terminal operations
To achieve the above functions, the lean TMS was required to perform and support:
The Journey to a Lean TMS
After requirements were established, Emtec Digital curated a team of cloud and data engineers, technical architects, and quality assurance experts to design and develop the lean TMS. We leveraged the power of .Net core, SQL, Azure storage, Azure Blob, and Azure App Services to create a solution such as the following:
The new TMS integrates seamlessly with the client’s Logistics and ERP systems and proceeds through the following process to fulfill an order:
Order status | Description |
|---|---|
Dispatched | When trip is received through interface |
Entering | Trip is undispatched and details for driver, transporter etc. are manually updated |
Loading | Loading has been initiated in system and driver proceeds to loading bay |
Processing | Physical loading has completed and operator is manually entering loading details in the lean TMS |
Loaded | The loading details have been entered and the BoL has been generated |
To sum up, the new application supports the following business processes as an application:
Automation that Delivers Powerful Functionality
The TMS, with process automation in document generation, now allows MEC’s terminal stations to enter, fulfill, and manage orders quickly.
The software provides access management capabilities for ease of user set up, role creation, and access to various modules like Master Data, Loading Instructions, Loading Confirmation, User Setup, etc. In addition to the above access management capabilities the system provides the following functionality:
- Generates FAN document
- Records actual loaded quantities, temperatures, and density
- Generates BOL document after loading
- Generates load confirmation and communicates the exact loaded amounts for further operations
- Plans for Ex-Rack orders flowed from ERP and other distribution management systems
The above functionalities were performed after a successful data migration as it enables terminal data visualization and operations management. The master data is managed by diverse stakeholders such as suppliers, customers, carriers, drivers, and their tractors and trailers.
Providing Benefits across 470 Terminals in Africa and Latin America
MEC now has over 470 terminal stations in Africa and Latin America and successfully manage bulk shipments, receipts, contracts, and open orders under inventory management. Along with providing a seamless experience, the lean TMS ensures improved efficiency, safety, and compliance of terminal operations for MEC.
We are proud to be a trusted partner to MEC, supporting them through their challenges and developing solutions that deliver true value to their operations. This is a perfect example of our ‘client for life’ approach. The success of the lean TMS, proves yet again that our success lies in enabling clients to achieve theirs.
