News briefs
Online access to quality documents improves product reception for Eastman Chemical Company site
11/07/2007
Eastman Chemical Company’s South Carolina plant receives daily railcar deliveries of monoethylene glycol (MEG) from Shell. A delivery can involve up to 30 rail tank cars, each one with its own Certificate of Analysis (CoA) to confirm the quality of the product.
Eastman uses the MEG to produce high quality PET pellets, which in turn are used by its customers to make drink bottles and other types of polyester packaging. As part of the company’s quality control, each rail tank car’s CoA has to be checked against a specification and approved before the unloading process can begin.
This used to be a time-consuming and inefficient process for Eastman Quality Assurance Assistant Rhonda Hudson, but has been made a lot easier thanks to the availability of CoAs through the Shell Chemicals Customer Lounge. "I used to receive the CoAs by fax and there was always a chance a fax would not get through or would go astray and I would have to track it down," Rhonda explains. "This could potentially cause delays and disruption for our materials handling department.
"Additionally, the CoAs were only available during normal office hours so rail cars might have to sit in our facility overnight or over a weekend until the fax came through and unloading could begin."
Following a suggestion from her Shell Chemicals Customer Relationship Coordinator, Rhonda was set up with a Customer Lounge account for a trial period. "Having access to the Customer Lounge meant I could retrieve the CoAs when I needed them and didn’t have to involve other people unnecessarily."
Once railcars are assigned to a delivery, the associated documents for that order, including CoAs, automatically appear within the current orders screen of the Customer Lounge. "It was a much simpler process and a lot smoother," says Rhonda. "I could simply look up the railcar numbers associated with a particular order and print off the documents."
Since the trial started nearly a year ago, Rhonda has taken Eastman’s use of the Customer Lounge a stage further. "I have now trained our materials handling teams and set them up with user accounts so they can access and check the CoAs for themselves," she says. "With deliveries arriving seven days a week, 24 hours a day, now there are no delays if product arrives when I’m not around.
"Since I’ve been taken out of the process, I can spend my time on higher priority or more involved quality issues."
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