The Scenario
Heavy vehicles play a vital role in everyday life. From hauling essential supplies to delivering high-end commodities, such as finished cars, the importance of they being available 24×7 cannot be overstated. The client is a Singapore-based heavy vehicle and allied component manufacturer cum service hub. It also undertakes periodical service of vehicles and allied components such as hydraulics. Because these can range in size, the type of service ranges from minor to major. Which means vehicles can be present at the service point ranging from a few hours to a few days.
The Challenge
At any given moment, the service station can accommodate no more than 50 vehicles. Absent a system and because of the sprawling nature of the station, it was impossible to determine whether or not any bay was free and whether the station was achieving its optimal capacity utilization. It was difficult to tell what type of service was required or for how long the vehicles were expected to stay, thus making it difficult to book new vehicles for service. This all translated into long registration waiting or worse yet missed service schedules.
Solution
The solution exploits the potential of Bluetooth. Each vehicle was fitted with a Bluetooth beacon and each bay with a gateway reader. Both the beacon and gateway communicate with a software application. When a vehicle arrives, the software registers its details and assigns it a beacon.
The gateway acquires the signals from the beacon and relays details such as time, service, and bay ID relevant to a particular vehicle to the webapp, which monitors all the communication between the vehicle beacon and the gateway reader.
Since the availability of slots for new bookings is always known, the station is able to optimize its total capacity.
Result
The software includes a comprehensive dashboard that helps:
- Ensure that the station is able to utilize all bays efficiently.
- Pinpoint in which bay a vehicle is being serviced.
- Forecast the duration of service required.
- Determine the type of service being done for reporting purposes.