Getting the timing right: by tracking a simple thing like time, producers are finding more ways to use database efficiently - concrete industry

Concrete Producer, The, August, 2003 by Rick Yelton

When a manager wants to know what's really happening around the plant, the best place to do some snooping is from a position near the time clock. It often seems that important bits of information are distributed there as fast as they actually occur. But with the power of sharing data through integrated computer systems, it seems that many producers are discovering that there are better methods to handle important company information--just as quickly and with a great deal more accuracy.

With highly interactive computer networks, multiple users can share tiny bits of common information. These common elements become the basis for a central database from which producers can develop a wide range of management reports. Since these reports are derived from common data, it is easier to make current analysis of company-wide trends. In a business environment where every second of plant or truck idle time is a real cost, these potential efficiencies may help improve operating margins.

When we first reported on this concept of instantaneous data, it was in the context of improving customer relationship management. Now software developers are showing how these system upgrades not only improve customer service, but they also can be a tool to upgrade management procedures and lighten the load of the often overworked information technology (IT) staff.

Putting a stamp on Improvement

When IT developers dream about designing their new management operating system of the future, they often begin by analyzing all of their typical operations. They might begin by noticing that non-exempt employees document on-the-job status with time clocks. Now that many of the producers' newer trucks have electronic governors that use hour meters to measure the operation activities, trucking activity is quantifiable by time. Then they might identify at what batch plant programmable controllers monitor each aspect of a plant function on a start time basis. Then there's the traditional dispatcher practice of writing the time of the loaded truck on each ticket.

In this review of a data-intense world, they'd find that practically all aspects of producer activity have some element of time stamping applied to it. And it would be easy to unite these seemingly diverse activities by collecting time stamps of the start of these individual events. When stored in a common data collection area, software programmers would be able to develop data processing applications with a common programming technique that would link each activity.

The implementation of this plan is not too far off. For example, one Utah-based producer has so soundly embraced the benefits of coordinating a time-stamping system that their IT department has practically made all aspects of voice communication obsolete. Where managers and dispatchers once relied on a series of radio signals to track daily activity, now the process is a touch away. And since the system is relying on cellular phone technology, it's been easy to use a phone's built-in clock to keep track of all of these activities.

This all occurred when the producer selected St. George, Utah-based Trakit Inc.'s cellular phone-based truck-tracking application. When combined with a dispatching software program, dispatchers can view and update every trucker's current status and assigned tasks.

Dispatchers also can time-stamp directions and other important notifications for drivers. Sending a message to the driver's cell phone can provide information about a new task. The system also reports when a driver responds to the message or updates the truck's status. And all of this occurs by simply sending a message to the software system through the cell phone.

Since the system uses a common database, updates of status changes, messages, or other events can immediately appear on the dispatcher's screen. And they are easily compared to other events that may be occurring at the same time.

By using a cell phone-based technology that allows faster integration of information, the system is quite powerful. Thus, dispatchers often can direct more drivers and maintain tighter control over important operations than they could using the old radio method.

But there's even more of an advantage to such a time-stamped data collection system. With additional software extensions, producers can choose the most common element that exists for all operations. The collection system records the date, year, hour, minute, and second on every time stamp from events throughout the whole system using the company's specified time zone. Thus, the common plant activities such as an employee's start time, the start of a batching process, and a delivery activity can be tracked from one database.

This Utah producer already has adopted a payroll feature. A driver now clocks in at the truck and notifies the dispatcher of a late login or overextended lunch time--simply by phoning in. Similarly, since every task is updated and documented with a time stamp, it is easily recorded in reports. This allows managers to easily assess driver performance.