Introduction
Fuel is a valuable commodity, so designing and installing a Fuel Station Management System for fuel station managers has become necessary in recent time. This software package ones installed will enable the industry to keep track of stock, fueling and fuel usage at all times. Once such an effective Fuel Station Management System (FSMS) is installed, effective monitoring and issue of fuel to vehicles and drivers and the in-vehicle use are resolved through effective generated reports. With so many tools and monitoring options available on the market, a need to select the right one is vital. Fuel Station Management System with automatic tank gauges, electronic line leak detection, monitoring software and an option to generate e-mail notifications with real-time status information or access to all data improves the efficient management of a fuel station.
It is therefore important for fuel stations to adopt and install effective management control systems with on-time accurate reporting systems. Real time monitoring provides the necessary input to the decision making process of network management. It also aid management to develop, implement, and evaluate a design for monitoring of performance objectives, such as monitoring overhead and estimation accuracy. Globally effective and efficient management systems help managers to measure their strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in the industry in which they operate. Again well organized and good management control systems guides management in organizations to deliver and take key decisions in their businesses. Effective management control enables organizations to adjust to price changes, product branding and analyzes suppliers. Efficient Management system by exception ensures that the right reports are generated and delivered to the right people in the organization in a variety of formats via email or SMS.
What is Management System?
A management system is a proven framework for managing and continually improving an organization’s policies, procedures and processes. It encompasses information sharing, benchmarking, team working and working to the highest quality and environmental principles. A management system according to Scheldt and Bachman (2010) helps organization to achieve its goals through a number of strategies via process optimization, management focus and disciplined management thinking.
Scheldt and Bachman (2010) has indicated that the fuel station management system (FSMS) is required to capture the daily accounting inventories and creation of reports based on the data captured to serve as a baseline and guidance for transactional activities. These fuel management systems according to Prieto and Stadler (2008) are used to maintain, control and monitor fuel consumption and stock in any type of industry that uses, transport including rail, road, water and air, as a means of business. Fuel management systems are designed to effectively measure and manage the use of fuel within the transportation and construction industries. They are typically used for fleets of vehicles, including railway vehicles and aircraft, as well as any vehicle that requires fuel to operate. They employ various methods and technologies to monitor and track fuel inventories, fuel purchases and fuel dispensed. This information can then be stored in computerized systems and reports generated with data to inform management practices.
Aims and Objectives of this Creative System
The purpose of this creative process is to develop and implement a system to analyse the real-time monitoring of fuel stations operators in Ghana emphasising on GOIL Petroleum Limited.
General objectives are:
• To develop and implement an efficient web-based fuel management system.
• To develop a management system that will assess and analyse the performance and profitability made by GOIL Petroleum fuel stations.
Specific objectives which are:
• To determine the accuracy and reliability of reports generated by real-time management system.
• To determine whether the management system would lead to greater profitability and efficiency for the organisation.
• To implement an effective and efficient fuel management system that can be adapted by management of GOIL Petroleum Limited.
• To develop an effective, efficient, user friendly fuel management system that could help GOIL Petroleum Limited meet it objective and improve performance.
Statement of the Problem
Information systems has expanded its role in all types and sizes of the business enabling managers, engineers, manufacturers to adopt the new emerging technologies in their companies. The management of GOIL Stations in terms of fuel supply, sales and stocks taken has been manual system in the sense that order of fuel products is done by the fuel station managers filling an order form from various fuel sites. The form is then sent to the head office by the managers of the fuel stations or supervisors, no telephone call or email is used as correspondence.
Replenishing stocks at various fuel stations takes 48 hours. If there is no supply at the fuel stations after 48 hours, the station managers or supervisors follow up at the head office. In Ghana, the current measurement model of GOIL is done by using dip sticks and the meter reading from the fuel pump. Fuel tanks are measured with Dip Sticks to check the level of fuel in the tanks. Meter readings of various fuel pumps are taken and subtracted from the fuel tank level to know the actual level of fuel left in the tanks. Reconciliation of the fuel management is done manually by checking the stock level and the amount of money received using the meter readings from the fuel pumps. For example petrol, diesel, kerosene, super effimax and diesel effimax. Reconciliation is based on the theory of stock control system that is, measuring the amount of stock delivered into the storage tanks and subtracting the amount sold, and measuring what is left in stock. Any variances from what is expected to be in stock may be due to losses, leaks, evaporation or theft of fuel. Daily sales are recorded in the sales book which can lead to inaccurate data recorded. The problem with the existing system include lack of provisions of protected and secured system to records against natural disaster such as fires, flood, robbery and lack of recovery system in the event of disaster. Also delay in locating and retrieving records during audit and lack of security and access control to records to ensure integrity of records.
It is against this background that a real-time fuel station management system for monitoring and tracking products and sales at each fuel station is needed to know the level of products left in order to replenish stocks quickly to avoid shortages at the fuel stations. With the developed fuel management system, the head office and station managers can generate stock reports, supply reports and sales reports of each station without requesting it from the station managers. It can also help in auditing purposes and reconciliation of products received by fuel stations.
1.3 Identification of Key Managerial Issues
Over the past decades, most fuel stations have crumbed and folded up, just as new ones are being resurrected and many more have gone through merger and acquisitions. The reason is that most leaders today lack operational excellence management Systems.
These systems are very complex and multidimensional in nature which every manager must be abreast with. The system establishes expectations and requirements for business units and guides leader behaviours to manage, prioritize and continuously improve performance; as it is the basis for assuring compliance within operating companies and business units across the enterprise. Managers therefore have to integrate Operational Excellence into their daily operations.
These management systems should be able to focus on:
• Reducing the risk of incidents
• Improving performance
• Assuring compliance
• Preparing for potential emergencies and others
In Ghana and the rest of the African continent, organizational managers are faced with the problem of management information systems, quality of output and adaptation of new technology due to the micro and macro-economic environment we live in. Again most managerial failures on the continent are attributed to misappropriation of funds, managerial incompetency and mismanagement. On the African continent most of the fuel stations including GOIL limited have failed to adopt and implement efficient and effective fuel management systems such as the Franklin Fuelling Systems because of managerial decisions and directives which emanate from their parent companies in Europe, America, and etc. Many a time decisions are centralized and prevent employee participation in management operations.
Literature review
Fuel Stations Management Systems Overview
Businesses everywhere are faced with new challenges like changes in patterns of customer demand, effective and efficient management systems, technological innovations and advancement, customer service level requirements and so on. The petroleum industry is no exception to all these new developments in the retail business. The threats and challenges facing the fuel and petrol stations in today’s economic climate have an impact on the individual site performance of service stations. With rising fuel bills and the importance of fuel in relation to the profits of an operation, it is important to understand and manage fuel efficiency. It is important to realize that there are many factors influencing fuel consumption, and that awareness of these at all levels of an organization is important if real efficiencies are to be made. The task of managing fuel use needs to be undertaken in a structured way, with a clear monitoring process in place. The cost of fuel is an ever present concern, meaning that fuel savings continue to be fundamentally important in running a transport operation.
In order to achieve the vision of autonomic management for large and small scale networked systems, it is necessary to move from traditional centralized approaches to decentralized approaches and the main drivers for such a transition are the need for increased scalability in system size, faster adaptability to changing conditions and increased robustness to different types of failures and mismanagement in the fuel industry. In traditional approaches to network management, tasks are performed by dedicated management servers that reside outside the network. The current trend, advocated and pursued by some key vendors, is to push management intelligence into the networked system. As a consequence, many management tasks will be performed inside the network by the managed system itself. One such task that we envision will be performed inside the network in the future is continuous real-time monitoring.
As networked systems increase in size and complexity, the necessity for simplifying their management and reducing their operational costs has become evident. In response to this need, the vision of autonomic management, or more general, autonomic computing has emerged. Following the autonomic computing vision as a human manager may specifies her goals or high-level of his or her objectives for networked system, which may be expressed in the form of behavioral rules, utility functions, and so forth. That is, the manager does not only specify what has to be done, but what has to be achieved. These goals are the input to the management system, which takes the necessary actions to achieve them (Kephart, & Chess, 2003). For this reason, the approach to real-time monitoring. To centralize the monitoring task and performing it inside the network, which in order words can be applied in fuel management system.
Every fuel has its own management system needs and specifications. Synergon an American Fuel station has it management system controlled through the cash registers. The system is suitable for controlling of other elements required for the operation of the filling stations. The cash register transactions are processed by a back office computer, keeping stock accounting, taking the inventory of the shop articles. The back office computer transfers data to the company’s central system.
Again in America, the CNG fuel Station has management software which helps the owners to manage and keep records on all ongoing activities of the station like gas sale, gas meter, WAPDA meter reading, generator consumption and monthly credit billing and accounts book preparations up to profit and loss and balance sheet. The modules in this software according to management of CNG fuel station includes; Sale Management Module, Accounts Management System, Membership Sale Management Modules and SMS Integration System
In other places in the World such as Saudi Arabia, Shell Stations employ a smart card based fuel dispensing system, El Fuel, Electronia’s Petrol Station solution, streamlines the process of allocating fuel concessions in a user-friendly interface while saving companies the expense of lengthy, often costly, and fraudulent-plague operations.
The fuel dispensing system is based on ISO/IEC 14443 standard compliant contactless smart cards, along with ElSmart POS Terminals, ElSmart Card Programmer, ElSmart Revalue Stations, and Web-based, Arabic/English Fuel Management application software.
Methodology
Manual System Description
With the manual system, supply of products is done by fuel stations filling an order form from various fuel sites. The form is then sent to the head office by transport, no telephone call or email is used as correspondence. Replenishing stocks at various fuel stations takes 48 hours. After 48 hours and there is no supply at the fuel station after 48 hours, the station managers or supervisors follow up at the head office. Measurement of stocks at the fuel stations is done by using dip sticks and the meter reading from the fuel pump. There is a daily tank dipping to check the level of the tank and the meter reading of the fuel pump to enable the station check the stock left and the variance. Daily sales are recorded in the sales record book which can lead to inaccurate data entry record.
3.2 Requirements Gathering Approach
The requirements gathering approach that will be adopted in the organizational management will be an agile development methodology. Agile method is a software development method that is:
People-focused and communication-oriented
Flexible (Ready to adapt to expected changes at any time)
Speedy (Encourage rapid and iterative development of the product in small releases)
Lean (Focuses on shortening timeframe, cost and an improved quality)
Responsive (Reacts appropriately to expected and unexpected changes)
Learning (Focuses on improvement during and after product development)
Automated System Description
With the automated system, supply of fuel products to various fuel stations is managed by the head office with the aid of the fuel station management system software that tracks products sold at each station without station managers filling and sending order forms. Fuel station attendants have a login page to key in amount of money and volume sold to each customer and the attendants only access the sales and volume page to see how much volume and amount generated by each attendant. They cannot access any other pages. This system will processed the entire data key in by the User/Manager daily and will produce reports for the day. The system provides complete data for management as well. The system is user friendly as the User/Manager has to log in to his/her page to perform any work. Users will be authenticated or identified by username and password. The automated system gives real-time information to management. Management will be able to make managerial decision in time. At a glance on their computer they can view how much has been sold at each station and the volume needed to be replenished. The automated system ensures more control and better accountability. This system allows you to view and analyse data of fuel stations from your computer to create accurate reports easily and efficiently. Manual error of recording in books is eliminated which ensures that real-time electronic reports generated
Web Services
“A web service is an interface that describes a collection of operations that are network accessible through standardized XML messaging”. The important thing about the service interface is that it hides the implementation logic from the users, which allows the service to be used on different platforms than which it was implemented. One significant aspect of the web services is that they will allow program-to-program communications. The major difference between the web services and other technologies is that, the web services are accessed via the ubiquitous web protocols such as Hypertext Transfer protocol (HTTP) and Extensible Markup Language (XML). Obviously the capabilities offered by the web services can be of great benefit to GOIL Limited as well. Because of the possibility of accessing various types of data or information from any TOTAL fuel station is accessible using the web service.
System Architecture
The system architecture defines the infrastructure common to the developed systems and the interfaces of components that will be included in the system. Designing of fuel station management system architecture is the most critical factor of overall enterprise systems. The fuel station management system architecture is based upon innovative web application service architecture. This system architecture provides access to users, manage data sources, connect them to the fuel manager application and allow users to access them in common formats
SERVER
Figure 2: System Architecture of fuel station management system
3.6 Benefits of Automated System over the Manual system
The principal benefits of the automated system are that site operations can be monitored in real-time, stock figures of each fuel stations are always current and amount generated and volume consumed can be identified immediately. Another benefit is that the fuel station management system assists managers and supervisors of fuel stations with timely information regarding the dispensing of fuels and stock delivery process so that information is easily made available to all interested parties, allowing all parties to run reports and investigate issues. Lastly, the automated fuel management system eliminate error-prone manual entry system, improve fuel tracking for accountability of fuel stations, eliminate misallocation and theft of fuel and regain control over valuable fuel assets. Data is viewable not only by station managers and supervisors but the head office staff also can access data from each station through a networking of all stations so that issues regarding the fuel are resolved quickly without delay. The manual system takes 48 hours for a request to be delivered and sometimes the request is delayed. With respect to the automated system, since the stations will be inter-networked it will take a shorter time for a request to be delivered. The internet cost of the automated system will be about 100.00 Ghana cedis and the cost of transportation for the manual system is also estimated to be 500 Ghana cedis in terms of fuelling the car which is transportation cost. Finally, the automated system has the ability to track any transactions and it will give you complete data for reporting financial purposes, management review, analysis and decision-making.
UML Class Diagram
The diagram above is a UML structure diagram which shows structure of the designed system at the level of classes and interfaces, shows their features, constraints, relationships, associations, generalizations, dependencies etc. Class diagram provides an overview of the target system by describing the objects and classes inside the system and the relationships between them. Class diagram show the relationship between classes in a system. Class level is the level on which programming is done; class diagrams do not depict any particular activity or process but only portrays the static features of the system (Kendall & Kendall, 2011)
UML Sequence Diagram
The sequence diagram is the most common kind of interaction diagram, which focuses on the message interchange between numbers of lifelines. Sequence diagram describes the interaction by focusing on the sequence of message that is exchanged, along with their corresponding occurrence specifications on the lifelines. UML sequence diagrams model the flow of logic within your system in a visual manner. Most often sequence diagrams are used to depict activities in a use case. They are used to derive the relationships between objects in a system. Sequence diagrams are used to illustrate activities in use scenarios to make the activities follow in a more logical order for analysis. (Kendall & Kendall, 2011).
In conclusion, the objective of this creative process is to develop fuel station management system that aims to support Total Petroleum Ghana Limited. This creative process proposes a system architecture for fuel station management system that integrates the business and information technology environment, more specifically, the fuel station management system allows for real-time monitoring and enables GOIL Petroleum Limited to track various petroleum products at each fuel station, produce sales reports, stock level reports, and supply reports. The system administrator and station managers can access daily sales, view and check the sales made by fuel attendants. Sales records and data from fuel stations can be managed and ensures that right reports are delivered to the right people.
References
Kendall, K.E. and Kendall, J.E. 2002. System Analysis and Design, Fifth Edition. Prentice-Hall International: Princeton, NJ.
Kephart, J. O., & Chess, D. M. (2003). The vision of autonomic computing. Computer, 36(1), 41-50.
Prieto, A. G., & Stadler, R. (2009, June). Adaptive real-time monitoring for large-scale networked systems. In Integrated Network Management, 2009. IM’09. IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on (pp. 790-795). IEEE.