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The Best-In-Class Do-It-Yourself Wet Stock Management by Orpak

Wet Stock Management (WSM) has virtually become a vital tool for any oil company that would like to manage inventory, detect losses, identify flow rate issues, and meet environmental regulations. This article describes a solution that operates either on-premises or as a cloud-based solution and can also run as a Do-It Yourself (DIY) solution using the built-in automatic detection and analytical tools or as a full service.



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One of the main challenges for a fuel retailer is managing the wet stock in the most efficient way in order to maximize the profit margins, avoid environmental regulation issues, and increase the retailer’s reputation. Utilizing the WSM system, a fuel retailer would like to:

  • Avoid fuel losses due to unauthorized fuel removal, leaks (pipes & tanks), and short deliveries
  • Minimize inefficiencies caused by over dispensing of fuel, slow dispensing, and fuel shortages
  • Protect the environment by meeting the national & local regulations

Orpak’s WSM is integrated with the oil company’s head office (HO) database & other HO sources. Therefore, it is seamlessly connected with all onsite forecourt equipment (Orpak, Gilbarco Veeder-Root, or 3rd party) which aggregates data from stations, POS, tank gauges, dispensers and other information (e.g. bill of lading), and dispensers. Based on Orpak’s proprietary big data analytics and sophisticated algorithms, WSM effectively detects operational and inventory levels irregularities, and analyzes possible causes to facilitate key decision-making and improve the operational performance.

Orpak’s WSM system can be implemented and deployed onsite at the customer's head office or as a cloud service. The ability to deploy it onsite serves companies (and countries) that don’t allow uploading data to servers outside of the company’s facility (or country). In addition, Orpak’s WSM system can be managed by the oil company in a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mode on top of being operated as a managed service by Orpak.

The system features an intuitive, customizable graphics dashboard with both macro and micro-level viewing capabilities (see Figure #1).

The above dashboard portrays a monthly summary of an oil company that has more than 120 stations. In a glance we can see that:

  • The overall situation is good - no loss/gain (upper left dark blue KPI)
  • There are 5 sites with suspicious losses (0.3%-0.7%) to be further drilled down (the graph below the dark blue KPI). For effective control, monitoring, and analysis, users can easily drill down from the network level to a single transaction, focus on problematic sites, and detect fuel losses in real time.

Examples from Orpak’s WSM usage:

  • Short delivery:

The WSM installed in an oil co. network can save substantial amounts of liters annually by preventing short deliveries (can be over 1M liters/year in some cases, for an average sized retailer)

>> The system automatically detects short delivery events, and can aggregate data over time for a specific delivery company as well as present trend

>> A clear graphical view enables drilling down and investigating each event in a Do-It-Yourself mode of operation (as can be seen in Figure #2 below)

  • Unauthorized fuel removal detection:

Thefts may be done by site employees or people with access to the site, for example, weight and measurement teams that may miss returning all the fuel dispensed for their tests. In such a scenario, the WSM system algorithms detects that not all the fuel was returned when tests were performed (as seen in Figure #3). By diving into similar cases, repeated thefts were ended saving 10’s of litter per test.

  • Over dispensing of nozzles:

Shortly after WSM was deployed in a MOC, the WSM built-in algorithms provided alerts on over dispensing of fuel, which was analyzed by local analysts resulting in savings of over 150,000 liters annually

>> An average site’s sales is approx. 15,000 liters a day (with an average of 8 nozzles per site)

>> In this MOC, there were >40 over dispensing nozzles detected, causing a yearly loss of over 150,000 liters

 

The wet stock management market has matured with several leading vendors covering the developed market. The typical offering is a hosted service in the cloud and analysts that assist to identify fuel losses, flow rates, and environmental issues. Orpak’s ForeVision Wet Stock Management (WSM) is a field-proven solution that offers the next level of wet stock management:

  • On-premises (enterprise) and hosted solution
  • Two modes of operations: Do-It-Yourself and full service. It has built-in tools with modern and intuitive UX, as well as an easy to learn and user-friendly UI
  • Business intelligent which is embedded in the big data analytics and the sophisticated algorithms resulting in clear alerts that support a smooth decision-making process
  • Direct connectivity to head office data (zero foot-print on-site, agnostic to any site configuration)

For more information, contact us using the form on the right or visit our website.

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