[labnetwork] gas cylinder tracking

[Dennis Schweiger]

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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