Case Study - Improving ISOtanks Round-Trip Cycle

Current situation

 Round-trip process has many owners

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  • Only 614 ISOtanks (76%) are taking part of the cycle

   
  

  • The average round-trip in current situation is 124 days, 2.9 round trips per year, total of 1780 ISOtanks are used in a year

   
  

  • Total time in the local site is 22.3 days (with High variability) , and the standard time taken for planning is 18 days

• There is a lack of structures methodology of working with storage devices
• Partial enforcement over the agreements regarding delays in the demurrage days

Challenge

• Management and control:
• Establishment of operational & organizational structure that wil bring the ISOtank to maximize utilization
• Appointing an owner which will be responsible for controlling and managing the entire ISOtank’s operations
• Commercial:
  • Changing commercial agreements enforcing methods
• Logistics:
  • Changing work processes in plant
  • Creating a custom made supply chain per customer \ office

Approach

• The recommendations are divided to 2 implementation phases : Short-medium term & Long term
• The recommendations for each phase are divided to:
  General recommendations which refer to cross organizational processes
  • Management and control
  • Commercial agreements
• Logistics recommendations for each stage in the ISOtanks round-trip
• Local - Plant
• Abroad - Using custom made storage method per customer/office

Results

• Short and middle term improvements can decrease the round-trip to 100 days, which is equivalent to add 430 ISOtanks (~21M$) to the cycle
• Long term improvements can decrease the round-trip to 76 days, which is equivalent to add another 730 ISOtanks (~37M$) and to reach a total of 1160 ISOtanks (~58M$) to the yearly cycle
• Management and Control
  Establishment of operational & organizational structure that will bring the ISOtank to maximize utilization
  • Appointing an owner which will be responsible for controlling and managing the entire ISOtank’s operations
  • Setting goals for improvement (regarding the cycle time duration) for each office
  • Creating ISOtanks monitoring dashboard for improving the control and measurement capabilities
  • Enforcing commercial agreements
• Commercial
  • Changing the conducting pattern with end-customers by adding an automated debit mechanism to the commercial contracts due to a loss of sales
  • Enforcing commercial agreements
• Logistics
• Local:
• Assigning ISOtanks tester on a regular basis in plant
  Tight monitoring on restoration stage
• Changing the working processes in plant:
• Using preliminary ISOtanks checkout
• Increasing cooperation with subcontractors regarding maintenance processes
• Abroad:
• Using custom made storage method per customer/office
• Pre booking of return ISOtanks in the destination ports