Special refinery H&R has turned to INFORM for help in optimising its tank waggon and road tanker management

In their refineries and special product facilities, the H&R group manufactures white oil, wax emulsions, paraffin, softening agents and many other products. In order to make the logistics processes for the dispatch of these goods more efficient, H&R Germany have assigned software specialist INFORM to implement two systems: SyncroTESS ItemControl for the management of the entire tank waggon fleet and a version of SyncroSupply, especially adapted to the needs of the chemical industry, to manage road tankers  in the inbound and outbound areas.

A large proportion of H&R products is sent directly to customers in rail tank waggons from one of the company’s sites, either Salzbergen or Hamburg. With the implementation of SyncroTESS ItemControl, a central tank waggon management system will be available, which will cover the entire planning, dispatch and tank waggon follow-up processes. In addition, it will take over the scheduling of the tank waggons according to customer orders, the transfer of block train or single orders to Deutsche Bahn (German Railways), the mapping of internal processes such as shunting orders, or tank waggon inspections, as well as the complete monitoring of the location and status of each and every tank waggon. The main reason for choosing SyncroTESS ItemControl was to increase transparency and to reduce the number of waggons needed. Especially the latter objective will be accomplished by an optimization component. SyncroTESS ItemControl features an optimized dispatch of customer orders, taking into account various criteria such as the suitability of the tankers, precursors, load capacities, and others.

In the dispatch of road tankersout onto the road, the INFORM solution SyncroSupply comes into play. Via a web-based time slot allocation a loading schedule is calculated, which ensures greater efficiency at loading sites. Alongside the daily planning of road tanker traffic, SyncroSupply also manages other processes at the company sites. This system helps to support the special demands of the chemical industry, such as the availability of products at individual loading sites, sampling, lab tests or weigh stations. The aim in the area of road tanker management is a more efficient handling of daily dispatch traffic, through a higher quality of planning and an increased transparency of the actual situation at the plant.

The implementation of SyncroTESS ItemControl at H&R is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, followed by the implementation of SyncroSupply.

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