Calor Gashas boosted the volume of
gas it transport in its tankers by 20% following a project to link
more than 70 IT systems usingTibco middleware.
Simon Went, head of development at Calor Gas, said, "Our
logistics operation has been transformed by the use of telemetry,
scheduling and onboard truck computers."
The project has helped the company speed up its invoice process,
which used to take used to take two weeks, to a day.
Other business benefits include improvements in key performance
indicators such as higher tonnage delivered per kilometre and
average delivery size, Went said.
The gas supplier used Tibco to connect business applications
together including the JD Edwards OneWorld enterprise resource
planning system (now owned by Oracle), Onyx CRM, telemetry,
logistics scheduling and driver onboard truck computers.
Calor has installed units on 25,000 of the 60,000 tankers it
uses. The units communicate data on gas deliveries weekly to a
database, which
Tibco application integration software monitors for changes.
The system calculates the customer's gas "burn rate", and schedules
a delivery if one is required.
Tibco also connects field service technician devices, document
management, data warehouse, finance packages and Calor's customer
portal.
Calor Gas will build on this integrated IT infrastructure in May
this year when it starts the upgrade of its ERP system onto the
latest JD Edwards Enterprise One ERP suite. This project is due to
be completed in 2009.
