Solutions

The significant shortage of qualified HGV and ADR drivers has meant that more carriers are having to rely upon agency drivers, rather than on contract employees.

This has led to a consequential decrease in driver information throughout the supply chain, the exposure of high value goods to a larger pool of ‘non-established’ drivers and the potential risk for customers of unknown drivers being given access to their facilities.

AutoRule helps customers and suppliers solve these problems by providing a secure central database of carriers’ drivers, which is both securely centrally accessible by supplier, carriers and customers alike, with specific driver information appended to each appointment booking.

With AutoRule’s Drivers Database you will gain:

• Detailed relevant data in respect to the exact driver that is allocated by a carrier to a specific loading or unloading appointment before the event.
• Access to a redacted scan copy of the actual driver’s license image for security verification.
• Greater assurance that a driver is correctly licensed to undertake the tasks associated with an appointment booking for a supplier and customer.
• Access for facility operatives to query the identity of any driver at any time during their time on-site at a facility against the driver database for the appointment booking.

Traffic congestion, adverse weather conditions, road network closures and other issues including vehicle malfunction can and do add considerably to the difficulties that carriers face in meeting their allocated appointment booking schedules. This then has a consequential knock-on effect for the scheduling of suppler and customer resources at their facilities.

AutoRule helps carriers, suppliers and customers dynamically plan around all these external factors by providing real-time ETA information for all appointment bookings that are appended to the centralised booking view. Armed with this valuable additional information, suppliers, carriers and customers can take appropriate and informed actions to retain optimal facility resource performance.

Also, the GPS tracking information provided from the AutoRule Driver Mobile App means that there’s no need for any expensive telemetry equipment, and Drivers can easily move between vehicles without the need to reconfigure the appointment booking.

With AutoRule real-time ETA tracking:

• All bookings are GPS tracked automatically by AutoRule system using a simple Driver mobile App.
• The AutoRule App is freely available to our customers without restriction, enabling the use of agency and contracted drivers alike.
• All data costs for tracking are provided as part of the AutoRule service, so there’s no impact to the driver’s mobile data allocation.
• Our ETA tracking sits quietly in the background with no need for any intervention by the driver.
• All ETA data is automatically appended to every appointment booking and colour coded for simple identification of any ETA issues.
• Suppliers, carriers and customers can take necessary actions based on real-time ETA information for each appointment booking.

A supplier or customer’s facility entry/exit security is a crucial factor in both securing goods at rest and indeed throughout the transportation supply chain.

However, the manual processing of numerous carrier security checks upon entry/exit against appointment booking can be time consuming, a duplication of effort and expensive too, especially if the supplier or customer is operating a 24/7 manned security gatehouse.

AutoRule helps solve these issues for suppliers and customers by providing three different levels of facility entry/exit security checks against any appointment booking and matched to the specific needs of each individual facility.

• AutoRule Lite security complements existing manned gatehouse security by providing security guard with real-time information for the exact ETA for a vehicle/driver, together with a comprehensive data package that includes the vehicle’s VRN, a unique appointment booking reference number and the driver’s identity information, including an image of the driver.
• AutoRule Standard security removes the need for manned security gatehouse staff and replaces this with a modern technology combination of facility specific QR code, GPS geofencing on the facilities gatehouse and strict time bounded access rights, based on the original appointment booking time adjusted by the real-time ETA.
• AutoRule Elevated is aimed at those TAPA facilities who wish to replace the manned security gatehouse with a combination of ANPR cameras, GPS geofencing, enhanced 3D facial recognition technologies and strict time bounded access rights, based on the original appointment booking time adjusted by the real-time ETA.

With AutoRule’s Facility entry/exit security options you can:

• Select different security levels for different facilities to match your specific needs.
• Complement or completely replace existing manned gatehouse security with a range of composite security technologies.
• Significantly increase entry/exit throughput with the deployment of advanced and quicker security automation technologies.
• Significantly reduced manned gatehouse security costs with the introduction of security automation technologies
• Automatically append entry/exit security information to any appointment booking without any need for additional paperwork.

Transportation facilities can be an extremely complex, busy and physically diverse working environments, with different staging areas preparing vehicles for loading or unloading and often with different facility resources needed to service those vehicles, depending on the nature of the primary business activity.

Identification of the location of specific vehicles to be called forward for facility resource processing can be a time-consuming process, involving facility spotters/jockeys often only armed only with a mobile phone and an out-of-date schedule of appointment bookings.

AutoRule really helps customers and suppliers solve these issues by providing the exact GPS location of vehicles across a facility in real-time; information which is then mapped onto either an actual satellite image of the facility or a bespoke representational map of the facility.

With AutoRule’s Facility Location Tracking you can:

• Easily locate any vehicle in real-time anywhere on a facility and without the need to even leave the facilities control office.
• Refocus the role of spotters/jockeys into that of facility resource planning coordinators with direct voice communication to vehicle drivers.
• More efficiently process the unloading and loading of vehicles across a facility with a real-time view of all the resources at a facility.
• Quickly identify potential resource issues in real-time and take appropriate corrective action.
• Deploy the solution across multiple carriers without the need for any additional telemetry or RFID system.

Facility resource performance issues will invariably follow a pattern; a complex underlying pattern that is inherently ‘felt’ by the onsite staff, as they regularly deal with these issues as part of their day-to-day tasks, but these are difficult to quantify.

On Facility Location Tracking provides the real-time data for the efficient hour-to-hour performance of a facility, but over time this information builds into an invaluable picture of how a facility is performing, where potential issues exist and where potential optimisation opportunities exist.

AutoRule’s Facility Heat Maps take this historic Facility Location Tracking data and graphically map this to provide a Heat Map that easily shows vehicle loading and unloading activities across a facility measured against dwell time. Dwell time is simply a measure of how long it takes a vehicle to progress through the various stages/process at a facility.

With AutoRule’s Facility Heat Maps you can:

• Search by carrier, resource, or even driver to identify specific potential facility performance issues.
• Take corrective action based on real long-term historic data trends to make informed decisions to improve facility throughput performance.
• Learn from local facility best practices and then employ these more widely.
• Trim under-utilised facility resources and refocus these onto more important resources areas.

The addition of specific transportation data can be important for carriers, customers and suppliers to provide additional supply chain tracking information that adds extra layers of security and traceability for shipment/deliveries. The challenge has traditionally been gathering and adding this information to an appointment booking without slowing down operational procedures and adding complexity.

AutoRule’s Mobile App allows drivers to easily collect and append additional transportation specific data to an appointment booking at a snap.

With AutoRule Data Capture you can:

• Collect and append to any appointment booking container ISO6346 information to correctly identify the transportation of container.
• Collect and append container/trailer lock security tag data to track if a security tag has been removed and replaced with a new tag.
• Enforce a mandatory driver 7-point driver inspection plan for container transportation.
• Create your own bespoke data capture requirements through the AutoRule App.

End-to-end supply chain information is a crucial element to support performance optimisation, accountability and security.

The addition of ERP supply chain information within AutoRule is achieved via our API and is bespoke to our customers individual requirements. Once an API connection has been configured by AutoRule, we’ll automatically add your specific supply chain data to each appointment booking.

With AutoRule ERP Data Integration you can:

• Import specific data from a supplier’s ERP systems which is automatically appended to each appointment booking.
• Export specific data to a customer’s ERP or Yard Management System (YMS) which is automatically appended to each appointment booking.
• Define a specific set of ERP data to be imported or exported and to meet the specific needs of the business.

Historic transportation supply chain data has become increasingly important to suppliers and customers, not only to inspect historic individual booking appointments, but also to either analyse longer-term loss patterns or to help reduce additional carrier charges associated with specific countries, drivers, facilities or carriers.

With AutoRule Data Archive you can:

• Meet all governmental corporate accountability objectives and including those prescribed by industry bodies such as TAPA.
• Store historical transportation booking data with a minimum standard 2-year retention period
• Review historical transportation data to view any potential long-term security or carrier cost implications.
• Increase the archive data retention period on a facility, business unit or country basis and as required by the business.