Eliminate Backups at Your Vehicle Scale
Strategies for Improving Productivity
Vehicle weighing can potentially be a bottleneck that negatively affects a facility’s overall throughput. Preventing backups at a vehicle scale is necessary to increase productivity.
Backups often delay deliveries of bulk material, causing shortages downstream or requiring you to maintain higher inventory levels to compensate. For both the meeting of production goals and the reduction of operating costs, traffic must be kept moving over the scale.
Weighing capacity
Long lines of trucks during peak periods are a frequent sign of insufficient weighing capacity. However adding a second vehicle scale increases a facility’s productivity by enabling trucks to haul more loads. It also relieves traffic congestion and allows a business to grow.
Unattended weighing
An effective strategy for efficiency in weighing is to enable drivers to process their own weighing transactions. By eliminating the need for a scale operator, an unattended weighing system can reduce costs, and increase transaction speed by up to 50 percent. Don’t let vehicle weighing slow down operations. Learn about strategies for improving productivity. This article includes ideas about how increased capacity and how unattended weighing can save time and money.
Profit from a Second Scale
Improve Overall Productivity
Every minute that trucks spend waiting in line is wasted time. When a vehicle-weighing operation backs up on a regular basis, it is a sure sign of a problem. Adding a second scale is a solution that pays off with greater productivity.
Plan for peak usage
Truck arrivals are rarely spaced evenly throughout the day. Most vehicle scales have peak hours when many trucks need to be weighed. Even if the average number of trucks per day seems manageable for one scale, a weighing operation could see backups during peak periods.
Trucks per day
Every vehicle-weighing operation is different. Some weigh one truck per day; others weigh thousands. When the volume of traffic is too large for a truck scale, it causes problems. Shipments are delayed. Traffic gets congested and productivity suffers downstream of the scale.
Weighment time
The number of trucks per day does not tell the whole story about how busy a scale is. Another factor is the time required to weigh each truck. One scale might be able to handle 100 trucks per day at two minutes per truck, but doubling the processing time reduces the number of trucks a scale can handle.
Six Reasons to Add a Second Scale
- Vehicles are more productive when they do not have to wait in line. Eliminating wait times can allow vehicles to haul more loads.
- The additional weighing capacity provided by a second scale allows room for a business to grow.
- Multiple scales relieve traffic congestion by eliminating long lines of trucks waiting to be weighed.
- A second scale can improve traffic patterns by providing dedicated scales for inbound and outbound traffic.
- If one scale experiences unplanned downtime, a second scale enables the business to continue weighing.
- The increased throughput allows facilities to keep less inventory on hand.
Benefits of Unattended Weighing
Process Vehicles in Half the Time
Introduce self-service efficiency to a vehicle-weighing operation. Unattended weighing offers an effective strategy for increasing productivity and decreasing operating costs. It enables drivers to process their own weighing transactions without the need for a scale operator.
Weigh more trucks per day
DataBridge™ software’s unattended weighing option speeds up vehicle weighing by enabling drivers to process their own transactions. It helps facilities improve transaction speed by up to 50 percent. Unattended weighing is especially valuable to facilities that operate multiple vehicle scales.
Simplify weighing transactions
DataBridge™ software simplifies unattended transactions by controlling what data is required and how it can be entered. Drivers can use an unattended terminal equipped with a touchscreen, card reader, or keyboard. They can also process weighing transactions from their smartphones or other mobile devices.
Prevent costly accidents
Trips and falls are the leading causes of non-fatal injuries to tractor-trailer drivers. Unattended weighing prevents accidents by keeping drivers safely inside their vehicles throughout the weighing process. Everything needed to complete a weighing transaction is right at the driver’s fingertips.
Unattended Terminals
- Touchscreen
- Card reader
- Keyboard
- Ticket Printer
- Intercom
DataBridge Express
- Drivers process weighing transactions on mobile devices
- Tickets sent to devices by e-mail.
- Cost reduction of 75 percent compared to traditional driver terminals
