Gas plays a central role in supplying and exporting energy from Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam. Various Southeast Asia’s gas production locations are far away from the demand areas and so the gas needs to be transported to long distances.
The high demand for gas in this region presents a requirement for the gas suppliers to do huge investments in gas cylinders, so as to end the shortage of gas supply. These tankers are a key returnable asset and so tracking them become imperative.
How can Southeast Asia’s gas companies operate successfully?
Gas demand in Southeast Asia has expanded since 1990; its growth rate is by far the fastest in the globe.
1. To have inventory knowledge : Due to an extraordinary rate of gas demand in this region, the supply of gas cylinders present serious complexities and challenges. Tracking these assets is important for their maximum utilization and availability.
It is essential for a gas manufacturer to have absolute knowledge about the operational status of his cylinders, their accurate locations and the types of cylinders that are available in his gas company, so as to ensure business productivity.
2. To never lose gas cylinders : For the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, tracking solutions can prove to be a boon. A gas cylinder tracking solution having RFID technology is the best to increase rotation of cylinders. The cylinders can be easily tracked, avoiding any circumstance of loss, which can affect the bottom line negatively.
3. To negate errors and high salaries of human resource : With rising labor costs set to accelerate in Southeast Asia in 2015, it becomes essential to improve efficiency and grab technologies that can reduce high expenditures. Workers read, write and enter cylinder’s data and handle maintaining the rental of the cylinders. Not only this process is expensive and time-consuming but also leads to data entry errors up to 10%.
Auto-capture cylinder data system that utilizes RFID technology can prove to be a blessing in expensive times and inefficient operations. It can ameliorate the ability of its personnel to attain a holistic view of the small-medium gas firms. The automatic data system will minimize redundant manual data entries and errors and rescue the gas company from rising labor expense this year. According to a report, RFID today can achieve 30% reduction in labor costs.
4. To overcome the shortages of barcodes : Until today, countries of South East Asia are still relying on barcodes for tracking their gas cylinders. However, the serious difficulties they face due to the handicapped nature of barcodes have not gone unnoticed.
Barcodes are slow to work in various locations and circumstances, as they need a clear line-of-sight to scan. With barcodes a lot of time is consumed in counting inventory, assets and shipment. Moreover, it fails to work in the extreme environment, is not secure, and does not have data capacity and rewriting flexibility.
The story is completely different with latest RFID technique. RFID does not require a line-of-sight, so the number of tags can be read at once. RFID is extremely flexible as it enables reading, writing and rewriting. The low-cost tags provide greater data capacity and is fully secured from duplicity. Besides, it can function well even in harsh conditions and can read tags up to long distances.
5. To attain real-time reports : Gas cylinder tracking software can offer real-time reports that help in running, analyzing and managing a business. The customized reports – daily, monthly, annually gives historical and comparative approach. Moreover, gas companies can get the reports related to work tickets, billing, servicing, and testing after embracing the amazing cylinder tracking software.
The tailored reports having the accurate data can be accessed timely and informed decisions can be taken easily. Every link in the gas companies’ logistics chain can be empowered for better performance of South East Asian countries.
6. To ensure safety of human lives: As the safety of the customers and employees is supreme to everything else, it is necessary to invest in RFID tracking system, so as to detect cylinders that are due for testing or marked physically damaged. Use of these unfit cylinders is dangerous, and so they need to be removed temporarily for testing and service.
At the end of the day, the goal of every business is customer satisfaction, and so delivering the right product and safety of the end user is paramount.
7. To maintain and multiply productivity : In an unstoppable competing world, maintaining and multiplying productivity has become the need of the hour for South East Asian countries. A solution to track high-pressure gas cylinders transform business processes resulting in increased productivity on an average of 30% from receiving to delivery.
Conclusion
To conclude, for South East Asia, employing gas tracking solution with RFID technology has become crucial, acknowledging the complexities, bar codes’ shortcomings, doubling expenditures, cylinder losses and time-consuming tasks in a fast growing and competing environment. The technologies have grown, and so the business demands to harness the advancement and embrace the opportunities the technologies offer today.