Background:

Explosives and explosive precursor materials are security-sensitive substances meaning that stock management is a highly regulated process. For commercial bulk explosives, this process can be complex as many site locations lack the necessary infrastructure, such as weighbridges and weigh cells, to measure material movements accurately. Also, the supply chain team often needs to manage stock within third-party managed stores with limited oversight over stock management and stocktaking. Lastly, blasting companies often sell raw materials and products to customers as they arrive at the site but remain responsible for the customer-owned stock until consumed in blasting.

Challenge:

Blasting companies often need to manage both bulk and discrete materials in their inventory to deliver different service types to their customers. However, those material types require a different method of management. While discrete materials can be counted and verified in the case of any discrepancy, management of bulk materials relies on processing the paperwork in a specific order and monitoring expected stock levels within the allowable tolerances. In the case of initiating systems, any unexplainable discrepancies are reportable to authorities. Arrowtail needed to design a process that was easy to follow and able to quickly identify unacceptable stock differences.

Solution:

The Arrowtail team developed the solution around essential business processes where each transaction is validated against expected values. This was further validated with a daily reconciliation of key site materials once all transactions had been completed for the day. Each transaction has an associated report with an extensive level of detail to help monitor data trends, such as calibrations of Mobile Processing Units used to deliver bulk products. Additionally, blasting companies can deploy Arrowtail to third-party managed stores to have a live view of their stock on-site. Lastly, reconciliation reports provide users with a one-stop shop to complete business processing of the invoicing period.

Benefit:

The Arrowtail team applied its extensive experience in blasting material stock management to deliver an out-of-the-box stock management process. This, in turn, allows onsite resources to focus on providing an outstanding service instead of repetitive administration tasks and reports. Every transaction is fully auditable across the system and provides a single source of truth for all stakeholders. Additional integration is possible with any other business system capable of integration that is used by the blasting company, its customers or third-party managed stores.