Automated End of Day Plant Wash Out

Overview

Digital Fleet has added the ability to automate your plant communication shutdown process. By automating wash out messages, you can reduce wasted driving and idle time, eliminate confusion, and free up you dispatchers to focus on tomorrow.  Read on to learn more.

General Functionality

When marking a truck to be washed out for the day, our system will hold the message until the truck breaks its home plant’s geofence. Upon breaking of the geofence the driver will receive the wash out message immediately. If the truck is already in the home plant geofence, the message will be sent immediately.

This allows the dispatchers to set a group of trucks to go home without the need to individually watch them come back into the yard. Overall having the ability to initiate wash out for multiple trucks, or a whole plant, will help reduce time spent managing the trucks and reduces the amount of time the drivers sit idle in the yard at the end of the day.

Accessing the End of Day Plant Wash Out Dashboard

The End of Day Plant Wash Out dashboard is located in the Dispatch dashboard area of the web application.

Layout

Trucks are grouped by plant tags with information on the current logged in driver, how long they’ve been logged in, and their current ticket information with status. The Returning ETA will update when the truck is in the returning status.

At each plant level the number of In Service trucks and active orders received from dispatch are shown to help give an overall view of the plants workload.

To help differentiate between in service and out of service trucks, out of service truck rows are greyed out. This is carried through to the plant rows when all the trucks associated to a plant are out of service. A truck is considered out of service if no driver is currently logged in to the truck.

Initiating Wash Out

Wash out can be initiated at a plant or truck level by selecting the checkbox on the plant row or on the individual truck rows. When one or more checkboxes are selected, the  button on the plant row becomes enabled. Select this button to initiate wash out for the selected trucks.

Once the wash out has been initiated, the message will be held until the truck breaks its home plant’s geofence. If the truck is already in the home plant geofence, the message will be sent immediately. To send the wash out message before the truck returns home, select the  button.

Canceling the Wash Out Message For a Truck

Once the wash out message is queued for a truck, there will be an option to Keep In Service. Selecting this will cancel the wash out message if it hasn’t been sent or send a “Keep in Service” message to the truck if the wash out message was already sent.

Wash Out Status On The Map

On the map truck slideout, the current wash out status is shown along with the ability to set the individual truck to a wash out status or keep it in service if wash out was already set.

Loaned Out Trucks

If a truck is being ticketed out of a plant that is different from its home plant, the truck will appear under its home plant with a  identifier. It will also show under the ship location plant with a  identifier.

When the truck is loaned out a button is available to notify the driver to return to their home plant.

The truck can also be set to wash out at its home plant and will not receive the wash out message until it crosses its home plant’s geofence.

Reset All Button

If data is looking incorrect or needs to be reset, the plant and truck wash out message statuses can be reset by selecting the  button. This will reset the plant status and clear out the wash out message info for the trucks which can be useful at the beginning of the day.

Plant Statuses

Not operating: All trucks tagged for the plant are currently Out of Service.

Operating:        One or more trucks are In Service and Wash out has not been initiated for any trucks.

Wash out Initiated: Wash out has been initiated for one or more trucks.

Wash out Complete: All trucks have gone Out of Service for the day.

Truck Wash Out Message Statuses

Waiting for return to yard: The system is waiting for the truck to return to its home plant and will send the message once it breaks the home plant’s geofence.

Wash out message sent: The wash out message was sent to the driver but the driver has not acknowledged the message yet. The time the message was sent is also shown.

Driver acknowledged: The driver acknowledged receipt of the message with the time the acknowledgement occurred.

Truck Home Plants

The home plant for the trucks are defined by the plant tags associated to a truck. This is used to determine which plant to use when sending the wash out message and helps us display trucks that are currently being loaned out to another plant.

If a truck does not have a plant tag associated with it the wash out functionality will not be available.

Customizable Messages

At a client level there is the ability to customize the wash out, keep in service, and send home messages. Please let us know how you’d like those set by contacting [e-mail].