NEWS ROOM

Singapore-based marine gas oil (MGO) supplier Victory Petroleum Trading Pte Ltd has experienced increased administrative productivity through the use of an e-Data Logger on board its bunkering tankers.

The system has done well to complement the transparency offered by mass flowmeters (MFMs) for bunkering, says its Business Development Manager.

“We are currently the only bunker supplier using an e-Data Logger application,” Naomi Lee told delegates at the Manufacturing Productivity Technology Centre (MPTC) 2019 conference on Wednesday (9 October).

“The application has minimised the administrative processes encountered during our operations. We have very good feedback our customers who are very impressed with this initiative and our crew is much happier now that documentation processes have been simplified.”

Victory Petroleum started test-bedding the e-Data Logger in November 2018 and fully integrated the application in its company system in January 2019.

“Since July 2019, we started to use MFMs on all our tankers during bunker deliveries. With the new change there were amendments in the form but this was not an issue,” explained Lee.

“We have now pre-set certain repetitive fields (eg. seal numbers) so our guys need not spend time keying in the data for every bunker. Also, the e-Data Logger is able to capture the bunkering meter ticket within the bunker delivery note itself for traceability.”

Lee, meanwhile, notes Victory Petroleum’s backend office has also experienced positive changes through the use of the e-Data Logger.

“In the past, we experienced several incidents where forms were written wrongly and due to multiple forms needed to be filled up during a bunkering operation we also have to decipher different handwritings by crew members,” she notes.

“Most of time, this ended up with office staff having to verify reports through phone with crew on board.

“Now, invoices can be prepared based on softcopies and we do not need to go through a stack of paper anymore. Further, we are able to easily retrieve inventory and maintenance reports at any moment.”

Moving forward, Lee said Victory Petroleum is exploring the possibility for its e-Data Logger system to include a ‘live’ feed to customers during bunker delivery, and is planning to link the application to create a seamless workflow from delivery to billing.

“The biggest reward was starting a culture of learning and fostering closer ties between the office and ground staff during this process, not including being able to put time to better use to make work more meaningful for everyone,” she concludes.

Reference: Manifold Times
Published: 11 October 2019