Path Environmental Technology

Path Environmental Technology (Path) cleans storage tanks.  Not just any tanks - they’re as big as buildings and store oil and industrial chemicals.  Cleaning these tanks has always been very labor intensive, dangerous, costly, and time consuming.  

Path uses proprietary technology to make the job safe, fast, and less expensive.  That’s why the biggest companies in the world work with Path.  

Path uses a lot of accessories and consumables to support their technology and teams.  Each job requires multiple CONEX containers filled with specialized PPE (suits, gloves, goggles, etc), hardware (tools, computers, etc), and equipment (berms, etc).  

In order to execute this complicated ballet of technology-driven industrial tank cleaning, Path requires very specific products, quantities, and timing.  

Typical preparation for these jobs began weeks to months in advance.  Path procurement managers or job leads took calls from armies of sales reps, each providing a fraction of the hundreds of different items required.  

Path would price shop and get dozens quotes for items based on their specs and volumes.  Path re-quoted all their supplies for every single job because prices and sales reps changed frequently and distributors would stop carrying items, were out of stock, or couldn’t fulfill in Path’s timeframe. .  

Over the year, Path management was spending thousands of man hours to procure supplies for jobs.  Sometimes the procurement process took longer than the jobs.  Even with this effort, they achieved no advantage - they had no stability in sourcing, pricing, or product quality.

Path initially found TSX Gear because they were having problems with specialized suits.  Their required suits were extremely costly, difficult to procure in the volumes they needed, and unreliably available from any distributor.  This was affecting safety and job timeliness.  

So TSX Gear created a supply chain just for Path.  Their own best-in-class suits, certified and tested, at a far lower cost than available anywhere, and always available 24/7 on their own private web procurement portal.  

Their teams loved it - ordering through their own portal saved hours and frustration from the procurement process.  Corporate loved that it was saving them money.   

So they did three things.

First, they had more products manufactured just for them.  Costly staple items like different types of gloves, etc.  

Second, they added ALL their job supplies onto the site.  It was just their supplies, always at a known price, and they didn’t have to search through any other brands or product variations.  

Third, they integrated the site into their purchase order software.  The procurement managers just ordered the items on the website and it automatically generated POs for the products. 

Before these changes, Path was spending months getting competing quotes, piecing together supplies from different distributors, having products that had not been evaluated/approved by their safety office, preparing, generating, and tracking multiple POs and delivery schedules.

After these changes, Path went to their own private website, ordered entire CONEX boxes filled with thousands of items in one click, secure in knowing they had agreed upon pricing, products, and safety approval.  No preparing POs, no tracking different delivery schedules.  

All of this was achieved in partnership with TSX Gear within weeks.  Path just provided the products they needed, the prices they were willing to pay, and the volumes they wanted.  

Field operators, procurement managers, and job leads didn’t need training to use the site, because it was just like consumer sites they were used to on the internet. 

Finance gets a monthly report of procured items and the jobs they were allocated to, all at prices that save them money.  

Safety knows that all jobs are being supported with consumables and supplies that are approved, instead of purchased at the last minute or from an unknown supplier.

The customers?  They just loved that Path was on budget, on schedule, and cleaned their tanks safely.  And that’s how Path has become the partner of choice for complex, large scale tank cleaning for the largest companies on earth. 

#SafetyElevated #TSXGear #PremiumSupplies