Development of the Joint Weigh-In-Motion and Measurement Reach Back Capability (WIM-RBC) - The Configuration and Data Management Tool for Validation, Verification, Testing and Certification Activities

Logistics Spectrum, Oct-Dec 2004 by Abercrombie, Robert K, Sheldon, Frederick T, Schlicher, Robert G, Daley, Kristopher M

Introduction and Background

The United States Department of Defense must maintain the capability to rapidly project massive combat power anywhere in the world with minimum preparation time. Currently, personnel use portable individual wheel weight or fixed in-ground static scales, tape measures, and calculators to determine vehicle axle weights, total vehicle weight, and center-of-balance for vehicles and palletized cargo to be shipped via railcar, sealift, or airlift in support of military and humanitarian operations. The process of manually weighing and measuring all vehicles and cargo subject to these transshipment operations is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and, most importantly, prone to human errors that can result in safety hazards and inaccurate data.

Errors can result from inaccurate or incomplete identification of vehicles and equipment; misreading a scale or tape measure and manually recording data incorrectly; manually miscalculating the axle weight, total vehicle weight or center-of-balance; and transferring data from manually prepared work sheets into an electronic database via keyboard entry personnel. Many of these errors can greatly increase during stressful deployment times and adverse weather conditions.

Errors in determining weights and balances in military deployments as well as commercial air transport can be fatal. In June 2002 a special operations combat supply plane crashed in Afghanistan, killing several of the crew. U.S. Air Force accident investigators concluded that the crash was caused by "imprecise information" about cargo weight combined with a "get the job done" attitude. The aircraft crashed not because it was overloaded but because it was overweight for the location, 7,200 feet above sea level. Army Times reported that weighing cargo at such isolated airstrips was not practicable - the Air Force special operations crews were relying instead on weight estimates.1

A Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) system may have applicability in response to the National Transportation Safety Board's February 2004 recommendation that federal regulators and the airlines develop methods to weigh passengers and baggage to prevent overloading of airplanes.2 The safety board had concluded that the crash of Air Midwest Flight 5481 on January 8, 2003 was caused by too much weight in the rear of the aircraft combined with a maintenance mistake. The United States military has recognized and documented a need for WIM technology,3 further documented the requirement4 and recommended a WIM technology solution for military applications in 2004.5

In this article we will concentrate on the configuration and data management aspects of military applications of WIM. We will discuss specific aspects of the United States Army/Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) WIM program, which will include the discussions of: 1) the configuration control of both the configuration of the WIM device and its software, 2) the data management of all weighing and measurement data collected from the ORNL WIM Gen II pre-production system, 3) the architectural components of the Joint Weigh-In-Motion and Measurement Reach Back Capability (WIM-RBC) Configuration and Management Tool itself, and 4) aspects of processing with respect to configuration and data management.

The lack of a standardized airlift-weighing system for joint service use also creates redundant weighing requirements at the cost of scarce resources and time. The process of determining the vehicle weight, center-of-balance, and individual axle weights for load planning and assets visibility consists of: staging and identifying the vehicle; determining the individual wheel weights; determining the axle spacing; calculating the total weight, center-of-balance and individual axle weights; marking the vehicle with its total weight and center-of-balance; accumulating the vehicle data for a group of vehicles; and, finally, entering the data into an electronic database to enhance military planning and visibility capabilities. Presently, the entire process is performed manually using a large static truck scale or multiple individual portable wheel weight scales, tape measures, calculators and clipboards. The process is very time consuming, manpower intensive and prone to human errors. The WIM system, shown in Figure 1, can greatly reduce the time required to perform this operation and eliminate the human errors that result from the manual nature of these measurements, calculations, and data input.

Key Features of WIM-RBC

The objective of the WIM-RBC is to provide a secured, Web-enabled, and central data and service repository for configuration and data management processing that is used to continuously analyze and improve the WIM system. The WIM-RBC stores and retrieves disparate types of system, logistics, and technical information in the form of text, data, images, and video using relational Structured Query Language-based data sources, flat files and external Web services as required. All of this is readily accessible through a simple Web browser User Interface (UI). The information storage and access is executed immediately over the Internet.