Background

Manufacturing plants often rely on both railcars and trucks to ship their products to distributors, retailers, or directly to customers. The choice between these transportation methods depends on various factors such as the nature of the goods, cost, distance, and delivery time requirements. Railcars are typically used for bulk shipments of heavy and large quantities of goods, such as raw materials, chemicals, and pellets, due to their capacity to transport large volumes efficiently over long distances. Conversely, trucks offer greater flexibility and are ideal for shorter distances and time-sensitive deliveries, providing door-to-door service and easier access to various destinations. This combination of transportation methods allows manufacturing plants to optimize their logistics and ensure timely and cost-effective distribution of their products.

Challenge

Keeping an accurate count of how many vessels have been filled can be a challenging task for manufacturing plants, particularly when dealing with large volumes and multiple types of products. This complexity often arises from the need to coordinate and monitor the filling processes across various locations and transportation methods. To streamline this process and ensure accuracy, many plants outsource the management of vessel filling to third-party logistics providers. However, outsourcing the filling process to third-party logistics providers can introduce challenges in accounting for production discrepancies.

Solution

1. Identify bin level tags. 
   • Make note of any bins that can be filled and emptied at the same time resulting In minimal changes in level
2. Look for a trend slope that corresponds to bin emptying and zoom in.
   • Slope should be negative and the shape relatively consistent across most fills
3. Add weight to the corresponding slope.
    

   

4. Perform and save a similarity search based on signal shape.
   • Adjust the minimum similarity score and weight as needed by comparing the number of results found for the past week/month to numbers recorded by operations or the third-party vendor
      

     

5. Set up a monitor with context items to keep count of the number of trucks/railcars filled.
    

   

6. Create a ContextHub view to capture bin fills for the desired time period.

   • Production is typically reconciled monthly. The time period can be adjusted using the Event Open button
      

     

7. Add a counter tile to a dashboard for up-to-date values.
    

   

Value

TrendMiner enables plants to internally track and analyze their filling processes in real-time. By integrating TrendMiner with existing production systems, plants can monitor vessel counts accurately, detect anomalies, and quickly address any discrepancies. As a result, customers can streamline operations, reduce dependency on third-party logistics providers, and enhance overall efficiency and transparency in the production process.