[labnetwork] gas cylinder tracking

[Charles Veith]

Good Morning Dennis:
         Over the next three days, I will be having concrete conversations
with Matheson,
Air Products and Linde. The purpose of the conversation will be your not so
unique
situation at Michigan.
          Having worked at two very big semi houses, the idea of having a
centralized
a management system for bulk chems and gases was the norm. If it is
occurring at
large firms, why can it not be configured to meet our needs?
           Having little data, I will make this broad statement. If you are
working with just
one firm primarily for all your gases, I would assume that there will be
significant
discounts for this loyalty. It is also assumed that even though you have a
special
relationship with this firm, you would be allowed to seek support from
other vendors
During periods of constraint

Regards,

Charles Veith
PS At  another university, a very tech savvy staff member is working on a
gas bottle
system that uses a low cost  remote monitoring system to track each
bottle's status.
If this system does come online, I will request that this person send an
update on how
the system works to this group

On Fri, Feb 23, 2024 at 8:02 AM Dennis Schweiger <schweig at umich.edu> wrote:

> Good morning all,
>
> As I finish up our yearly gas cylinder audit, I'm thinking there has to be
> a better way to track all of the cylinders we have in the fab so that we
> can easily verify what is on site, and cross reference tha number against
> our demurrage charges.  I would be interested in your input on the
> following issues from your facility's operation;
>
>    1. What is the oldest gas cylinder you have installed in your facility?
>    2. How do you track the cylinders being used by your facility?
>    3. How do you handle gases with potential expiration dates, and what
>    is the typical duration these gases are kept in use in your facility?  I'm
>    particularly interested in the reactive HPM materials that have a
>    tendency to volatilize with moisture.
>    4. How many different suppliers are you getting your gas cylinders
>    from?
>    5. How many individuals in your facility change out gas cylinders?  Is
>    that number the same for both inert and HPM materials?
>    6. Are you using CGA or DISS cylinder connections on your HPM gases?
>    7. How do you address the extremely low use gases that you have to
>    have, but usage is borderline "maybe we should remove this gas capability".
>
> Here are the answers for our facility;
>
>    1. We have some inert cylinders (Nitrogen, Argon) that are over 4,200
>    days on site.
>    2. A couple of our former employees set us up with a scanning program
>    that allows us to use our cell phone to scan the cylinder bar code (or
>    manually enter the cylinder serial number) of each and every cylinder that
>    comes into our facility.  We have also assigned every cylinder position in
>    our facility a unique and identifiable location number that is scanned as
>    part of that tracking system.  When a cylinder moves within the facility,
>    its location is updated, as well as its status (received, full, returned).
>    There are still some issues with tracking (hence the yearly audit), and I'm
>    trying to get our cylinder vendors to provide more information on both
>    their packing lists, and their invoices for both the gas charges, and
>    cylinder rentals.
>    3. Our current goal is to "right size" the cylinder fills so that we
>    change out the HPM gas cylinders every 18 months.  This right sizing also
>    helps to reduce our exposure risk in the event we would have a
>    catastrophic failure.  We have not had one yet, but just in case.
>    4. We currently have three different vendors that provide gas
>    cylinders for our facility.  I'm trying to reduce that to two to keep the
>    demurrage invoicing easier to manage.
>    5. All of our staff have been trained to change out inert cylinders,
>    however of the 12-14 people, only about four do it more frequently than
>    once a year.  There are only two of us that change out the HPM gases.
>    6. All of our inert gases are CGA, and all of our HPM products (except
>    for H2, CH4, and C2H2) are using DISS cylinder connections.
>    7. Currently, we revisit all of these at least once a year, and
>    evaluate the capability/profitability of having that gas available.
>
> Thank you for taking the time to respond, and sharing your practices.
>
> Dennis Schweiger
> Facilities Manager
> University of Michigan/LNF
>
> 734.647.2055 Ofc
>
> "People can be divided into 3 groups - those that make things happen,
> those that watch things happen, and those that wonder what happened."
> Within which group do you belong?
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