Since its inception over 70 years ago, industrial gas major Air Products has cultivated a truly global supply chain encompassing businesses in over 40 countries outside the US. Spanning across four main segments: merchant gases, tonnage gases, electronics and performance materials, and equipment and energy, the company is involved in a range of supply modes including bulk, microbulk and pipeline supply.
But what are the secrets behind the company’s supply chain success? Maropeng Bahula, General Manager of Bulk Gases and Supply, believes that Air Products’ core focus on prioritising individual strategic focus areas within the supply chain has a major role to play.
At the heart of these focus areas is logistics, both inbound and outbound. “The inbound logistics includes the strategic sourcing of equipment, consumables, spares and services and includes warehousing of critical spares,” he explains.
Outbound logistics, on the other hand, includes the delivery of bulk gases to the company’s packaged gases depots and to bulk customers nationally. To optimise both streams, Air Products emphasises the importance of metrics that are tracked on a day-to-day basis.
When it comes to sourcing, the company reveals that it continually tests the market to ensure that they are paying competitive prices for goods and services. For outbound logistics, Bahula explains that Air Products employs a heavily measurement-focused approach.
This includes deploying specific technologies to make sure bulk tankers are being optimally utilised and implementing measures to ensure fuel efficiency such as procuring the ‘best performing’ truck tractors on the market.
Efficiency is the name of the game, too, when it comes to preventing delays. According to Bahula, Air Products encourages minimal non-driving delays to keep distribution costs low throughout the supply chain.
To accurately measure the delivered product and increase efficiency at weighbridges the company has deployed flowmeters on their tankers.
This focus on digitisation underpins a large portion of the company’s supply chain success. Bahula says that the Telemetry and the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is the backbone of the company’s distribution operations, enabling the company to download reports and data that provides insights into operations and performance.
Its telemetry technologies encompass the company’s Tank Monitoring System, which features the company’s Process Intelligence driven approach to process optimisation.
©Air Products
Installation involves connecting a pressure sensor and, optionally, a pressure transmitter to the tank, along with a battery-powered Wireless Intelligence Node (WIN).
The WIN regularly measures tank levels (usually every one to two minutes) and sends the data wireless to an indoor receiver. Each WIN can monitor two tanks, and there’s no limit to the number of tanks that can be monitored at one site.
Bahula says that this focus on optimisation and efficiency also helps the company ensure its supply chain sustainability goals. “By making informed purchases, the more efficient vehicles play a crucial role in reducing our carbon footprint – by optimising our tankers to a specific gas service, we are able to maximise our payloads which ultimately assist us with our sustainable supply chain management endeavours.”
Supply chain challenges and the future
Bahula notes that, although 2020 was the most difficult year, there are still considerable challenges to be faced for all industrial gases’ companies. Shipping has been the major hurdle, with longer lead times due to pressure on shipping lines.
Equipment that used to arrive in six to eight months now takes up to 14 months from order to delivery and costs for materials and shipping have increased.
Stating that planning is ‘mission critical’, Bahula added, “We are faced with having various sources of product, various plant configurations, customer locations across the national footprint, cross border customers, varying tanker sizes depending on customer storage tank sizes etc.”
“Within the industrial gas manufacturing industry, there are stringent requirements and several protocols we need to follow to meet all the regulatory requirements pertaining to ‘dangerous goods transportation’.”
He said that all these factors need to be considered, making planning critical to ensure that customer requirements are well understood and met ‘on time and in full’.
