Jan/Feb 2005

Suppose you have a network of mission-critical fixed engineering installations, and one of them suffers a fault. How do you ensure that the best-placed mobile engineer is automatically to rectifying the task? That is to say, the engineer who is currently within the shortest distance, and also has the greatest amount of working time still available that day, the right type of service vehicle, the right tools on board, and so on?

VSc Solutions, the telematics and supply-chain management specialist, has come up with a new solution in the form of something called "proximity tracking". The first implementation of the system is by a utility company in central England.

As soon as a call-out request is received at a central control point (a "mobile gateway"), the system checks on the location and current activity of all units in the vicinity, then makes an intelligent choice of engineer on the basis of a whole range of criteria such as those mentioned above. The disposition of vehicles is also visible in real time on a screen map.

While the individual stages of this process are not revolutionary, VSc reckons that by combining and packaging them into a complete solution it has stolen a march on competitors.

 

The solution extends the capabilities of VSc's recently-announced Dispatch Dynamic suite of supply-chain and telematics products (m.logistics, last issue).