Meet Jip: Supervisor Tank Planning

I studied Logistics and Economics in Breda. I was looking for an internship, and at that time, a NewPort employee was renting my grandfather’s house. He told me he worked at a logistics company in Moerdijk. It seems NewPort was the best fit for my internship assignment! I learned a lot during my internship about the internal processes, and together with the General Manager we created a plan to improve the empty repositioning flow of NewPort. It was a very interesting and challenging time.

Yes! Once I graduated, the General Manager asked me to stay at NewPort. I started at the Planning department as a Depot & Repositioning Planner. I was really motivated to learn more and develop myself, because I wanted to know more about the different aspects of transport and tank planning. That is when I got the opportunity to specialize myself as a Tank Planner. For me, Tank Planning is like solving a puzzle which can be improved every time you create it! In this position, I got some more responsibilities: I had to make sure there was a sufficient stock in Europe. And there was more… We were also in close contact with Sales and Customer Service in the Operations department. It’s not a lie, I was literally ‘the spider in the web’.

When I first joined NewPort, it did not take long to get used to the ‘working life’. I was quite impressed by the huge departments and all colleagues who were busy calling and arranging transports. It is always busy, but also very pleasant with a good working atmosphere. At NewPort we work hard, but we also play hard!

Now, I have been working at NewPort for more than 6 years. Most of the time was spent as Tank Planner and in 2022 I got promoted as Supervisor. In this year, I also finished my master degree in Business Management and IT. The IT part was completely new to me, but this really helped to understand the link between operations and IT and how a logistic service provider like NewPort is becoming more and more an IT-driven organization.

As a supervisor, I feel responsible to keep the working atmosphere good and improve processes to make work more comfortable for our employees and our customers. At the tank planning department, we are responsible for tank allocation and empty repositioning in Europe. I believe communication, both internally and externally, is the key to fulfill this job.

It depends, really. Sometimes I spent a lot of the time behind my desk and the other day I am running around from meeting to meeting or exceptionally ‘abroad’ on a vendor visit. In our day-to-day business, we do work a lot with depots which are handling, cleaning, and repairing our tank containers to prepare them for future export orders. So currently our day is filled with monitoring inventory, planning, and initializing projects which will make our life easier.

We have stand-ups and team meetings in which we keep each other updated about settled goals and operational challenges. As a team, we do work very close together. When someone needs help, everyone drops their work to find a solution together. It is very nice to be able to rely on such colleagues.

The speed of the projects, I guess. Last year, we managed to implement a (ERP) system in which the company succeeded to work within this new system. With this new system, we became more flexible, which is currently needed in the hectic market. Also, I think it’s challenging to create connections between our and external systems in order to share real-time data.