OreFlow — Exporting ore without losing a document or a day of vessel time

Problem

Information lived in emails, spreadsheets and phone calls. Nobody knew for certain which document was missing, who had to sign it or how long each phase was taking. A late piece of paper was paid for in days of vessel downtime, and the laytime calculation was done by hand at the end, when nothing could be corrected anymore.

Constraints

• Events happen dockside: they had to be logged from a phone, as they happen.
• Each party — shipping line, agent, customs, client — requires its own documents, with its own statuses.
• Laytime rules and KPIs change per contract, so they could not be hard-coded.

Solution

I centralised the whole operation in one system: each operation's record with vessel, ports and required documentation; the loading plan with barges and tonnage; port events with duration and status; and a mobile time tracker with a stopwatch to log every event from the dock. Administration defines document types per party and the laytime rules, and the system produces the laydays statement and exports the documentation as PDF and ZIP.

Relevant features

• Operation record: vessel, ports, laytime and documents
• Loading plan by barge and hold with tonnage
• Required documentation with status and PDF/ZIP export
• Port and top-off events with duration and filters
• Laydays statement with laytime calculation
• Mobile time tracker with a per-event stopwatch
• Per-party document catalogue and configurable KPI rules

Result

The whole operation — documents, timings and owners — lives in one place and is logged as it happens. The team knows what is missing before it costs a day of vessel time, and laytime is calculated from the real events rather than reconstructed afterwards. The system is in production.

Screenshots of the system

From the operation record to the stopwatch on the phone.

A live system belonging to a real client: I cannot publish logins, but I will walk you through it on a call.