New trunking control for Bass
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• The transport division of Bass Production Ltd has installed a new control system at its recently opened trunking centre at Burtonon-Trent.
The system consists of a series of magnetic' control boards, two of which have been set up on the wall and cover vehicle scheduling and manpower utilization for the current and following week. Each board is divided to show vehicle schedules on one half and manpower utilization on the other. Each half is further divided and scaled to represent a week (168 hours).
Coloured magnetic strips cut to the same time-scale — the length of the strip corresponds to the time taken to deliver each load — are fixed to the board to show when each vehicle and driver is working or otherwise engaged. Thus the fleet's programme can be seen at a glance, and any change of situation can be quickly noted on the board without upsetting all the vehicle/ driver schedules. Drivers are allocated a vehicle and delivery according to the board layout.
The third board is a trailer location board which is virtually a representation of the trailer parking bays in the yard.
Each trailer has its own marker so that when it arrives its marker is placed in the appropriate section of the board. Extensive use of radio enables various departments to inform the trailer controller of its progress through the yard until it is reloaded and ready to go out again. Differently coloured markers are used to identify trailers belonging to different depots, while their shapes identify, for instance, whether it is a platform or tank.
Each depot is free to use any of the trailers that passes through its hands, unless a depot requests the recall of a trailer for a service or DoE test. Every day each depot receives details of where its trailer has been routed, thus by a simple telephone call or telex the transport programme can be adjusted so that the trailer returns to its base.