Computerised delivering is here
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A COMPUTER program designed to monitor drivers' productivity schemes has been developed by a Birmingham company, and is being offered to the industry.
Mentorum Ltd has developed Transprod, a program which helps administer bonus payments systems, and claims that it is designed to monitor all costs associated with vehicle operation.
The company says that, unlike other systems, Transprod takes account of fuel usage, so that a driver who "thrashes" his vehicle in order to beat a time standard set by the company, is also seen to be costing the company money, and is therefore not entitled to a bonus payment.
Targets are set for each driver before he sets out on a job, and the actual performance is fed in on completion of the job, and this is then recorded on the system's files, highlighting the driver's ability to earn bonus.
According to Mentorum, this also shows the areas in which a driver fails to earn productivity bonus as a result of scheduling errors made by a traffic clerk. Poor scheduling or routeing can prove as expensive as poorly driven vehicles.
"There is a limit to what a driver can do. A traffic office giving stupid destinations and routes can destroy his bonus po tential," says Robert Woolley of Mentorum.
The system can be integrated with Vehicle Control Systems' Vedac tachograph reading system, and the monitor can also receive such Prestel information as that which will be contained in BRS's expanded Datafreight service which is being introduced later this year.
But Mr Woolley's program does not include provision for stipulating routes to be followed by drivers, as he believes that it is better to leave such decisions to the driver.
Transprod requires a portable Apple II computer, a monitor, two disk drives, and a Centronics 739 printer, which cost between £2,500 and £3,000. The software for the program costs aboi.it £1,000, and running costs are limited to about £50 a year for disks and £24 for paper, and the equivalent of about 50 units of electricity per year.
So far, Mentorum reports interest in the system from transport operators in Co Durham and Cambridge, and it plans to contact other operators as the system becomes better known.
Further details are available from Mentorum at 168 Corporation Street, Birmingham, B4 6TF. Phone 021-236 3349.