Real Time Integrated Transportation System
The transportation industry is very competitive in our industrialised economy, with the pressure of fulfilling high quality service demands for efficient operations in supply chain and logistics management, and with this transport service providers are failing to achieve necessary high quality standards in their operations. This paper attempts to illustrate the integration opportunities of different upcoming technologies such as RFID, GPS, GPRS, e-Commerce concepts and high end computing, to improve the operations of transport service providers in meeting customer demands.
Software vendor has just initiated a pilot service based on RTITS concept, so it is too early for us to quantify the efficiency gained from the implementation.
But the clients registered need not buy any software packeges for their daily operations. They just pay minimal registeration fee (for company) and monthly subscription fee based on number of drivers (or vehicles) for using web based service. In addition to this there is no system maintenence cost at clients end, making this service as an economical system. Clients also find this service as an efficint way to comply with new Working Time Directives Legislation.
Hello. Great idea and hope this will provide more efficient services to client. I have one question to ask. Is there any limitation on registration? i.e., how many service providers to be allocated to every service consumer?
There are no limitations on registration.
Regarding allocation of service providers to service consumers; it is open virtual market place. Service consumers and service providers both search for appropriate deals (based on cost, efficiency, route etc.), and mutually agree for the service similar to auction and reverse auction model of e-business.
Reading through the issues in your introduction, "Service providers currently do not .... existing route", I would not completely agree with you because such systems are already in place, maybe not in this region.
http://www.informap.ae/infofleet.asp gives details about fleet management program which does exactly the same as your paper describes and much more as I was involved in releasing the prototype version 3 years ago.
This paper looks to integrate such vehicle location systems with real time traffic information and route planning. They also seem to be suggesting that the system provides a marketplace for customers.
IIUC, if you want to send a parcel, you can choose the carrier of the parcel based on real time information - which courier is currently ACTUALLY going to be the fastest. The system is also capable of monitoring the working hours of the driver, and integrates parcel tracking via RFID. That's a lot more than fleet management! (Still, nice system Saril!)
However, I have to ask the authors if they think that they have a real chance to establish the system as a marketplace? Many courier/carriers have parcel tracking available on their websites, and certainly adding in a real-time estimate of pickup and delivery would be a fantastic idea, but are the different companies going to want to rely on the same data? Aren't they going to want to gain some commercial advantage over each other? If they can't deliver as quickly as someone else, why would they want it to be easy for the customer to find out? Isn't the B2B dot.com era over?
Our system has the capability to get the coordinates, orientation and among other things like how many times the driver has switched off the engine, his braking pattern, speed, fuel and other levels, etc,. I am sure with these information, we can deduce much more than the driver's actual working hours!The control room could also send messages/instructions to the unit which would then be displayed to the driver.
The conceptual system presented in this study is very interesting. The concluding slide states that this concept is currently being piloted with existing transport software vendor. From this implementation, have you been able to quantify the efficiency gained by applying RTITS?
Emmanuel Brousseau