Supply Chain Management Software for the Oil and Gas Industry

Supply Chain Management Software for the Oil and Gas Industry

Extending ERP Systems with an Add-On APS Solution

The founding team of ORSOFT consists of process engineers and mathematicians. Before founding the company, this team was active in a research group “Systems Process Engineering” of a technical university. In this research group, topics from the oil processing industry as well as topics from the batch chemical industry were worked on.

Based on this, planning tasks for DK and VK refining, for blending planning for VK and DK, for lubricant production (refining, blending, packaging), for the transport of oil in pipelines, and for crackers have been solved by ORSOFT employees since the foundation of the company. Further there are experiences for the support of the data reconciliations.

Solutions in use:

Supply Chain Management Software for the Oil and Gas Industry
  • Tank Management
  • Pipeline and Port Management for Feedstock Provision
  • Tactical SCM Production and Purchase Planning, Product Cost Calculation
  • Continuous and semi-continuous processes
  • Blending of liquid products in multi-purpose plants
  • Container Filling and Bulk Loading of liquid products

ORSOFT tried to propagate the use of SAP software for mapping resource utilization and material flow along the logistic chain port -> pipeline -> tank -> refinery -> tank -> blending as early as 1990s. Meanwhile, ORSOFT is very good at mapping reactors (characterized by content and process), single material and multi-material tanks, tank groups, continuous mass flows, and blending in SAP ERP.

Supply Chain Management Software for the Oil and Gas Industry

In particular, it makes sense here to use the ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench in the “Tank Planning” variant as an Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) system to support these industry specifics.

The solution can be used as an add-on to SAP ERP – without the need for a second database, as it works exclusively with SAP ERP data. A normal modern user PC is sufficient for the rich client installation.

ORSOFT is a member of the SAP Industry Value Network for Chemicals and SAP Industry Value Network for Consumer Products; it provides the “Advanced Planning Boards” for SAP within the frameworks of Best Practice Solution for Chemicals and Best Practice Solution for Pharmaceuticals. The SAP-certified solution ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench is available in the SAP Store.

These customers from the petrochemical industry have already been won over for supply chain management projects with ORSOFT:

BP Refining & Petrochemicals GmbH | H&R GmbH & Co. KGaA | Klüber Lubrication München KG | Sasol Germany GmbH | BP Refining & Petrochemicals GmbH | H&R GmbH & Co. KGaA | Klüber Lubrication München KG | Sasol Germany GmbH | BP Refining & Petrochemicals GmbH | H&R GmbH & Co. KGaA | Klüber Lubrication München KG | Sasol Germany GmbH | BP Refining & Petrochemicals GmbH | H&R GmbH & Co. KGaA | Klüber Lubrication München KG | Sasol Germany GmbH | 

Benefits

The introduction of ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench leads to more reliable and exact planning of the logistical processes along the supply chain. This enables the reduction of unproductive time and material buffers that unnecessarily bind capital. At the same time, the existing capacities are utilised better and necessary adjustments (e.g. weekend work or additional shifts) can be recognized at an early stage. This allows for direct and financially effective savings.

Many clients appreciate the substantially higher level of transparency in logistical processes. This transparency allows faster and more precise date and delivery confirmation within the company (e.g. between distribution and production) and to the client and suppliers. All departments work with one database, which substantially reduces the need for manual adjustment.

The execution of an implementation project for an APS system – such as ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench – often makes companies aware of the increased challenges for their logistical processes due to higher precision, and they find ways to standardize them. This increases the stability of the processes and thus avoids uncertainty in process execution.

The following advantages can be achieved:

  • permanent reduction of lead times
  • increased usage of production resources
  • reduced effort for production planning
  • better handling of supply chains with increased complexity
  • continued lowering of stocks
  • closer integration of suppliers and forwarding companies
  • faster reaction to modified client requirements
  • better reaction to volatile raw material prices and availability

Sasol Wax GmbH, Dr. Schömenauer:

“At Sasol Wax we have been using the ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench for strategic planning purposes … As a company that processes crude oil derivates we are strongly affected by the volatility of oil prices.

Our products are highly dependent on the peak seasons of our customer markets. Therefore we must produce a substantial amount of our inventory in certain periods, leaving us with no other option but to work with a high stock level of semi-finished goods.

The first objective in the planning department is to optimize the production margin. To do so a make-or-buy plan has to be prepared to decide on the most profitable scenario; is it more profitable to buy already semi-finished goods or to buy raw materials and process them?

The second important task is to plan and control the inventory level for the whole logistics chain. Due to a relative high inventory level and a very volatile price/cost environment we highly appreciate the product cost forecast functionality included in the ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench. This unique functionality also allows our sales personnel to place future orders considering the development of product costs. Their colleagues in the purchasing department can act immediately and adjust their buys according to the actual sales forecast. Hereby we can generate a very important competitive advantage in the market.

One of the reasons we selected the ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench at Sasol Wax is because of its easy to use “Windows-like” handling. Secondly, unlike other primitive APS, the ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench offers new modern functionalities to the Oil industry such as Tank Management and Blend Optimization. Particularly the ORSOFT Manufacturing Workbench’s margin optimization tool has proved valuable to gain a competitive advantage for our company. Overall we’re truly convinced that this tool is a state-of-the-art software for our industry.”

User Experiences | Quotes from Users of our Software in the Oil and Gas Industry

H&R Lube Blending GmbH: "Interacting processes become transparent." | H&R Lube Blending GmbH: "Fast information retrieval leads to the possibility to additionally control production progresses." | H&R ChemPharm GmbH: "Solely positive effects by working with ORSOFT MWB! 22 years speak for themselves!" | H&R Lube Blending GmbH: "Simultanious planning of capacity and quantity works completely visual." | 

Annemarie Kersten
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