Field ERP for industrial tank cleaning
From the client's request to the signed report. Crew and supplies planning, execution by shift, photo report, certificate and billing.
Case summary
An industrial tank cleaning company closed each job with reports assembled by hand and billing in a spreadsheet. We built a field ERP that follows the request, planning, execution by shift and delivery. On completion, the system generates the PDFs, the photo report, the certificate and the billing spreadsheet.
What the system does
- Cleaning request by the client
- Planning of crew, equipment and supplies
- Execution by shift with a timeline
- Photo report with before and after pairs
- Cleaning certificate
- PDF reports by service type or cost center
- Billing spreadsheet with idle hours apportioned
- Supplies inventory
What was the problem?
A tank cleaning job involves several fronts under the same call: diesel, water, fluids, ducts, gas free. Each front has its own crew, shifts and supplies. At the end, the client expects a report per service, a photo report, a certificate and a bill that matches the hours worked and the hours idle.
All of that was assembled by hand after the crew came back. The report was late, and the idle-hours math turned into an argument.
What was built?
A field ERP that covers the whole cycle. The client opens the request with the tanks and the services. Planning builds the pre-job with crew, equipment and supplies, and inventory is deducted. The crew records execution by shift, with start, pauses and end of each service line.
A single reference number follows the cleaning from request to reports, which ended the confusion between internal codes and the number the client knows.
How does it work day to day?
In the field, the supervisor opens the job on a phone and records each event on the timeline. Before and after photos are taken right there and form the pairs of the photo report.
When the job is completed, the system assembles one PDF per service type or per cost center, according to the administrator's setting. The completion email goes out with the PDFs, the billing spreadsheet and the original attachments from the request. If a required attachment fails, nothing is sent halfway and the delivery stays available for a retry.
General idle hours are split equally among the service lines that actually started. With two water lines and one diesel line and nine idle hours, each line gets three.
What changed in the operation?
The report stopped being an office task and became a consequence of the field record. The apportioning rule became explicit and the same for every job, and the billing spreadsheet separates service pauses from general idle hours.
This kind of automatic closing is what we describe in AI and automation. The system itself is a custom web system. For another field service case, see environmental emergency response.
Services used in this case
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