Many businesses deal with various shipments to deliver their finished goods into the markets and receive raw materials for building their products. It is very essential to monitor the activities of the trucks and transportation to ensure that the process is done in an automated manner, reducing costs and time consumed. There is a need for industry 4.0 logistics solutions, supply chain management software and tools to optimize these processes and activities.
Syook held a webinar on how a business can easily manage their in-facility trucks for maximum logistical efficiency on the 29th of September 2021 from 16:00 – 16:45 hours. The webinar was conducted by Arjun Nagarajan, the Co-founder and CEO of syook along with Dij Phukan the Vice President of Marketing. The webinar focused on the management of all vehicles and transportation within a plant.
The webinar covered the following topics:
How to properly manage your vehicle
How can the ROI for each vehicle be increased
How to ensure a quick truck changeover
How to prevent truck accidents in an establishment
How to prevent bottlenecks and shipping delays
How to make sure that a truck driver's place is attended
The webinar was aimed at educating all the attendees on how to manage all their trucks, logistics and shipments on time to enhance their operational excellence and profits.
Truck in Truck out is an industrial IoT solution that is part of the Syook platform and is used to optimize in-plant logistics. Customers may use this solution to control truck entrance and exit as well as track the position of trucks and drivers as they execute their duties. When specific thresholds and acceptance requirements are not met, the system notifies users.
The following are the most typical difficulties Syook have experienced with our customers:
High congestion at the entry and exit of any site
Financial loss owing to high truck detention rates at the facility
Slow truck movement results in a loss of efficiency in your supply chain
Lapse management is reactive rather than proactive.
The benefits TiTo provides are of the most important value for consumers. This involves gaining instantly shared ownership of efficiency with their transportation partners. Previously, there was always inefficiency in terms of delay that was not obvious and constantly felt out of control since there was no sight. Customers may now control bottlenecks and delays in real-time. Instead of hearing about it in a report a few hours or days later, we can identify which vehicles are late in real-time and take preventive actions.
Some major problems and issues faced by companies handling logistics include the High bottlenecks at entry and exit of any facility. This can be solved by real-time bottleneck identification, reduced stress by reducing congestion, decreased waiting time and better control over deliveries and dispatch. Companies also face financial loss due to high detention rates of the trucks at the facility. This can be solved by having higher accountability for truck vendors, more trips per day, reducing paperwork, predictable driving and resting times, reducing trucking bills, reducing fuel consumption and avoiding the analysis of post-mortem reports after the loss has occurred. Poor logistics also create the slow movement of trucks which results in a loss in efficiency within the supply chain. This can be solved by real-time bottleneck identification, decreased waiting times, optimised utilisation of docks and loading ramps, more deliveries and dispatches per day, predictable load and unload windows and improved local traffic flows.
By working with various companies, Syook has gathered data and information to develop all their modules and solutions. Syook has drawn 7 methods as to how organisations can optimize their supply chain management system and logistics using TiTo.
1. Waiting time at gates:
Traditionally, a paper gate pass is created which is manually entered into a computer system at the entrance. This is usually correlated with SAP or other systems. On average truck drivers spend 45 minutes for approval to go through the gates. Syook has decentralized the entry process. With the use of BLE, RFID, GPS tags and IoT gateways, the system allows easy security checks with photographs and videos of the contents inside the truck. Truck entry is approved within 3-5 minutes. This is done by using mobile devices, where the data entry is done with the digital gate pass.
2. Dock occupancy time:
The system allows the monitoring of all the truck activities in order to make sure that all the trucks spend no more than the expected time at the loading and unloading docks. This enables the reduction of time spent at each dock, money spent on extra hours and allows room for more trucks to load and unload their truck contents within the allocated time. This also optimizes employee and labour efficiency.
3. Configurable rules and alerts:
Many organizations have various and different rules pertaining to the department, tasks or job role. Companies can now set configurable compliances and rules for each employee, contractor, truck or high-value asset. For example, Guard B should move from gate A-C every 1 hour. The compliance violations are monitored and alerts are sent by the server to the user in the form of SMS, push notifications and emails.
4. Reports and Trends:
Many heads and leaders in the supply chain roles and industry are keen on understanding the various trends and reports for each asset. They can easily understand which vendors or assets create business optimizations and which reduce the business activities and induce extra or avoidable costs. The data collected from the various different activities will enable leaders to evaluate the use of all their assets, resources, contractors and employees. The RTLS system is an IoT inspired solution that enables the collection of useful data which in turn is able to make decisions that enhance the operations of their businesses, increase profits, reduce error, accidents and costs.
5. Checkpoints:
All checkpoints can be monitored, collecting data regarding which trucks enter in and out of the facility along with the contents being delivered and shipped. This solves the issue faced by many organizations where security guards don’t have the resources and technology to capture data pertaining to all the trucking and logistics activities. The security guards are provided with mobile devices which are used to enter critical information about every truck activity.
6. Real-time dashboard monitoring:
It is essential that organizations have a command and control centre of the digital twin of their facility. This enables users to have real-time visibility to detect issues, errors and alerts. This also enables the opting of proactive decisions over-reactive decisions. Immediate actions can be taken in case of any compliance violations and alerts.
7. Automatic compliance checker:
There are many activities that happen inside a plant or facility with regards to trucks, employees, and high-value assets. Most of these activities have configurable compliances assigned to them. The compliances are required to be checked automatically, ensure the required compliances are enabled or disabled, ensure if the alerts are being generated and received. Once compliance is broken, InSite allows users to understand the root cause of the compliance violations, how to recover from the violations and ensure that the compliance is not violated in the future. This allows users to take proactive decisions over-reactive decisions.
By implementing the TiTo solutions supply chain management will have real-time bottleneck identification and higher bargaining power. Plant Managers will have decreased waiting times and better utilisation of docks and loading ramps. Manufacturers and Suppliers will have better control over deliveries and dispatches, higher accountability from the truck drivers and vendors and reduced trucking bills. Transportation Vendors will have more trips per day, decrease fuel consumption and predictable load/unload windows and reduce costs. Truck drivers will have decreased waiting time and travel time, less congestion so less stress, less paperwork, predictable driving and resting times. The system will also lead businesses to the green revolution by reducing pollution, improving local traffic flows and increasing traffic safety.
The webinar was concluded by answering various questions and queries. Some of the questions and answers are mentioned below.
1. What are the different ways the data can be used which are collected by the system by the operations managers to optimize the whole system?
Data is used for both short and long term gains. Let's take an example for short term data analysis, a truck goes in and after 2 hours the vendor charges detention charges. In order to avoid this users can set compliances and alerts for 1 hour and 30 minutes, evaluate ways in which they can cut short the time and save on costs.
For long term analysis, users can understand the various trends for each activity. Users can also evaluate the effectiveness of each asset, how much profits they gain or how much they lose after investing and implementing their new processes or assets.
2. What are the examples of various compliances?
The truck can not spend more than 30 minutes on the docks
Trucks can not spend more than 3 hours inside the plant
Trucks can not spend more than 20 minutes in the parking lots
2. How is the data collected?
BLE (Bluetooth low energy) is used to collect data. The BLE chip is embedded in the ID card assigned to each vendor, employee, asset.
3. Can the system be used for other moving assets?
Yes, the same system can be used for monitoring various high-value assets inside the plant or facility, employees, vendors etc. Any high value moving asset can also be tracked. Real-time asset location allows for monitoring the activities of all the companies assets and resources.
4. How useful is the system for the hospitality industry?
The system allows users to ensure that all the tasks are being performed and completed on time. For example, ensure that all the toilets and rooms are re-stocked with supplies and cleaned after each use and before each guest arrival; ensure that no high-value supplies are stolen from the rooms or toilets; ensure that safety personnel are posted at required locations at all times.
5. How does the supervisor get notified? How does the process work?
The system has multichannel alerts. Alerts are categorized into different categories such as low, medium and high. The alerts can be sent as an email, push notifications or SMS, high alerts are sent by SMS to ensure that the user receives them on time.
6. How is tampering detected?
An accelerometer is used to detect stationary or inactive assets and employees. The ID cards and BLE tags are assigned to assets and employees ensure that assets are tracked. Heat maps are used to monitor the assets to understand the anomalies present in the facilities.
The webinar created a great impact and answered various questions pertaining to managing logistics, operations and optimizing their activities to generate profits and reduce costs.