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Digitalizing Deliveries: Deploying OBC for reliability, efficiency and the environment

Published on January 01, 2023

2 minutes

In 2017 alone, Air Liquide made 64,000 bulk delivery trips. It works out to an average of 170 trips a day, an increase of 15000% from a mere 10 years ago when the average was 11 deliveries a day!

While positive data is a good thing, this increase, however, has translated to an expenditure of an inordinate amount of time and money for the sole purpose of printing and processing delivery documents. Every order generates paperwork that requires manual archiving and tracking.  The customer service unit who oversaw these tedious administrative processes would spend days endlessly looking for information to fulfill an order. Adding to the pain and frustration would be the sinful amount of paper used.

As such, the toll on our environment and the administrative inefficiency were aspects that Air Liquide sought to change for good.

And we did just that in 2018.

Air Liquide developed an in-house tablet application, the On-Board Computer (OBC), that has a two-prong advantage; it serves not only to digitalize the bulk delivery process, but also provides its customers with ready access to reliable and accurate data. OBC wields its magic by tapping into the convergence of multiple telecommunication technologies.

The Bluetooth and GPS-enabled application enhances reliability by minimizing room for human error when it comes to calculating the quantity of gas delivered. With it, our drivers are able to conveniently snap an image of the gas gauge before and after filling the tank. Then, the  data (i.e. the volume of liquefied gas delivered) of digital flow meters which are installed in  the delivery truck can be transmitted via a Bluetooth signal to the application.

The GPS capability built into OBC helps drivers deduce the fastest route to take for each delivery. Our customer service unit and logistics team are able to get real-time access to delivery data so that they can use the information to schedule deliveries in an emergency such as a truck breakdown. To make it more customer-centric, the latest OBC updates have also incorporated features such as customer feedback and delivery notifications. Air Liquide is making steady progress in the era of intelligent data management to strengthen our business model and support our customers, with social responsibility towards the environment at the forefront of our minds at every step of the way.

We are digital. We are efficient. We are green. #airliquideistransforming