By Keith Reid
Terminals and bulk plants perform Important, but relatively unglamorous tasks in the industry. Retail fueling at a convenience store, even a tanker dropping a load of fuel at a retail site provide the public face of the industry. These more dynamic areas also typically see a continuous stream of innovation among a range of solution providers. To a great extent that’s because the consumer marketing push at retail and highly competitive nature of supply push so much change.
While larger terminals typically receive significant attention from their operators, it’s not uncommon to see less attention paid to issues like automation with smaller, single-operation terminals or to a marketer’s bulk plant. In many cases if what’s in place today (maybe for a decade or more) is working acceptably, then the budget hit to upgrade can seem daunting. That is particularly the case during a lull period in margins, or with operations where the retail operations or delivery fleet seem to need more financial attention.
“There are a lot of smaller terminals that are feeling the pinch. This is obviously a very cyclical process where everybody wants the latest and greatest and they are fine for quite a while because there is a longer business cycle for product ownership,” said Micki Verhagen, the product manager for Schneider Electric’s DTN Guardian3. “You’re probably about 50-50 automation today. There are not many people without a degree of automation these days mostly from a regulatory standpoint.”
And yet, significant capabilities are gained by updating to the latest technologies to facilitate automation such as software and the move from mechanical to electronic equipment in the fuel distribution infrastructure. Away from automation, the range of purely mechanical equipment such as that found at the loading rack have seen significant enhancements that impact reliability, safety and efficiency. Technologies that were innovative even just a decade ago have been supplanted by the next generation(s).
Automation Benefits
There are a number of automation software solutions available for the smaller terminal or bulk plant from a range of vendors. Among those, Schneider Electric offers its DTN Guardian3. Total Meter Services has the TMS6000 suite of software products. Toptech, part of the IDEX Corporation along with Liquid Controls, offers hardware and software for terminals and bulk plants. And yet…
“We have run into people who are actually running several facilities on Excel spreadsheets,” said Dave Rajala, technical liaison manager, proving technologies, Total Meter Services Inc. TMS is a software and automation service company specializing in storage and handling of liquids including design/build. “One company that is now a customer went through a fairly heavy heating season a year ago in the Northeast running five or six small distribution terminals using Excel spreadsheets. They had difficulties in keeping track of fuel, obviously, because it was such a heavy heating season.”
Given the capital costs involved, what can be gained in return?
Automation typically touches inventory management, transaction records, bills of lading and site control. Automating those process can lead to more accuracy and efficiency, less product shrink and fewer headaches with the myriad of regulatory burdens tank operators face.
“One of the things that is important is material balance,” Rajala said. “So if you have regulatory systems in terms of taxation, where the terminals are paying tax at the terminal level rather than at the retail level with some of these fuels, without automation it’s very difficult to create those tax documents. You have to be very precise about which customer got what fuel at a specific point in time, and what we do is hand that data to their back office software. We don’t do the back office calculations, but we hand them a data stream. Without good accurate data how do they pay the tax authorities?”
As the saying goes, time is money—literally. “Most automation systems help get the information into the back office more rapidly than manual process, said Verhagen. “The sooner you can bill the sooner you get paid, so there’s a time value of money aspect.”
Beyond basic transaction reporting, the amount of data harvested can be mined for much more sophisticated purposes.
“Customers who use automation can get reports daily, weekly, monthly or whatever,” said Rajala. “The customer can access automatic reporting systems without having to do any manipulation, for want of a better word. You may get prompts to say “give me these dates,” but even that can be automated. So that every night at midnight or something the daily report gets generated, so it’s on the desk the next morning.”
Verhagen echoed the importance of reporting, noting that it will be a leading focus of additional development with the Guarding product in coming years. “Everybody wants information, and the newer generation terminal automation system offers a vast amount of reports already canned and ready to be sent to customers,” she said. “Or, custom reports that you can pick and choose the data and how you want to see it. It can be presented in a number of different formats from standard printouts to PDF files that can be sent to any stakeholder, and the data itself can be sent in an almost any data forma, such as XML, that will let it be integrated into a variety of systems.”
Rajala noted that these systems can facilitate gate access, clearly identify the customer, facilitate the correct product loading, provide live-stream video and even control allocation arrangements to shut off the pumps when the agreed-upon amount is reached for a customer. All of this capability allows automation to truly automate a site, and can impact the need for personnel to monitor the operations
“We don’t want to really encourage getting rid of employees, but that becomes one option,” said Verhagen. “Automating and efficiency also allow you to actually increase your business without increasing your staff. And, terminal and supply managers and schedulers can be freed up to work on more important operational areas instead of manual processes.”
And beyond that, whether someone is sitting in a building at the site—or not—automation allows senior management access to critical information from practically any location.
“In today’s Internet and cloud environment, for want of a better description, there are all kinds of options for remote access,” said Rajala. “That allows the operator who might be sitting at home or on a mobile device to pull up information from the terminal. That is all available from the package that we provide. There are various levels, but all of that is sitting there and we can make it available to the customer in any form that is useful.”
