Why the NWI Weighbridge Cloud Portal is a NHVR Chain of Responsibility Compliance Revolution

If you are a manager or a participant in the Australian transport and logistics sector or in the supply chain segment, you already know the critical role Chain of Responsibility plays. In particular, Executive due diligence duty | NHVR is a critical area of responsibility for drivers, managers – and company directors alike. Access to reliable data in real time is more critical than ever.

New Cloud Portal technology can now enable managers to access data, reports, charts, statistics 24/7/365. Easy log-in access to the cloud-based central database for all depot weighing events across the country is a gamechanger.

Supply Chain Managers know, when it comes to heavy vehicles on Australian roads, Chain of Responsibility compliance covers a wide area of factors:

• Ensuring individual axle group weights of vehicles leaving your premises are not overloaded according to published limits
• Ensuring the loads within exiting vehicles are properly restrained
• Ensuring vehicle drivers have answered truthfully and have complied with a variety of questions that may include confirming: Is your license valid? Have you consumed any drugs or alcohol? Are you within your log-book driving hours for this trip? And so on…

In fact, any type of compliance question can be asked and answered. The responses could be recorded with a simple yes/no, or by choosing a response. Knowing these questions will be asked and recorded digitally for all time can influence and improve stakeholder behaviors.

Unmanned Driver Control Stations with touchscreens for data management and validation can collect weighing event data, including date and time, vehicle type, driver ID, License Plate data and images, vehicle images. It can be configured to ask the river any questions your imagination can conceive that may be helpful in your COR Compliance (think audits!) as well as in your broader overall operations. Overload events can trigger a response including emails to defined recipients and other automated actions. If drivers do not answer the COR questions they cannot proceed forward, for example.

The bottom line is the modern-day weighbridge can be about more than just a weighbridge ticket. For sophisticated Digitally Maturing organisations this data capture event can be part of a wider Industry 4.0 Digital Strategy – and what makes this possible now is the NWI Cloud Portal.

New Technology

New technologies – including the cloud portal – now allow a national organisation with, say, five, ten, twenty or more depots or distribution centres to standardise their data collection methodologies. This means that every site collects consistent data, and every vehicle weighing event, along with driver responses, is instantly uploaded to the cloud portal. This data is then compiled and available in a variety of formats, including detailed reports, graphs, and charts, for easy analysis and insights.

The driver can receive a physical weighbridge ticket in the way that suits your needs. He can get a printed ticket, receive a digital copy via email, or log into a web app, enter his ID, and download a digital ticket directly.

Managers with access to the Cloud Portal, however, get access to all the data 24/7/365 now and forever. Use of an optional industrial modem at the data collection point means that all data can be captured and accessed independent of the user’s network.

Data Now
Below are some examples of Search Criteria on which Reports can be based. However, almost anything is possible. You can create the criteria/data you wish to collect and analyse. Use your imagination and we will configure it for you accordingly. Moreover, this configuration is fluid and can change or expand at any time.

• Show me Driver ID # XYZ weigh events for all time; or for the last 3 mos/6 mos/12 mos;
• Show me Subcontractor XYZ weigh events for the last (pick your time period)
• Show me all B-double weigh events for (pick your time period)
• Show me all Subcontractor X weigh events for (pick your time period)
• Show me all weigh events after 9pm (pick your time period)
• Show me all weigh events during Saturdays and Sundays (pick your time period)
• Show me all axle overload events by vehicle type
• Show me all axle overload events by axle group type
• Show me axle overload events by Driver ID, by Subcontractor, by time-of-day definition
• Show me axle overload events by Destination, by Customer, etc.
• Show me all logbook entry results for x driver at X interval
• Show me all load secured by method-1, -2, or -3 for X vehicles or X driver by x date

You get the picture. However, it’s your business, and you are the expert, you decide what data you want. It’s important to note – each or all these search criteria can all be defined by site, by state, by national; and individual log-in access to data or reports can be segmented in the same way if wanted. For example – national managers could access all data and reports, while state or depot managers could be restricted to access only state or depot data – if that is the preference.

The weighbridge data entry/capture event is an opportunity to capture and track data that may be very important to both internal and external stakeholders. This is a new way of thinking about data in the logistics business. It may or may not be clear to you at this stage how best to take advantage of this, but intuitively you know this is a game changer.

Yes, this starts out as NHVR and COR, Safety, accreditation & compliance | NHVR  but the data capture event means that there is a unique opportunity to “connect, collect, store, analyse, and visualise event data and information.” Here is where imagination and knowledge of how your business could benefit comes in.

The difference between winners and losers in Industry 4.0 (and 5.0) will be the imagination of managers regarding data and statistics and how to use them, and the willingness to invest a relatively small additional increment for the final step in the process: “Analytics Software and Cloud Portal Development and a Monthly Cloud Hosting Fee.” (By the way, this is how NWI Group words our offering.)

Current Paradigm
In most cases national supply chain businesses do not have a nationally coordinated best-practice approach to NHVR COR compliance. Each state location operates independent of a national strategy, and very often uses weighbridge hardware and data capture software that is either random to an inherited location, or that results from a state manager making a local decision in isolation at the time.

Even new greenfield sites may have a weighbridge chosen by the builder or a subcontractor who wins the tender to build or fit-out the site. All that is being considered is that the driver gets a WB ticket and that the axle weighing event results can be stored somehow in case they are needed later or saved for internal auditing needs.

What I am strongly suggesting is that you take this just one step further and use the data to your operational and auditing advantage. You “connect, collect, store, analyse, and visualise event data and information.”

But how?
How do you do this? Easy. You talk to a company like NWI Group about these concepts when you need your next weighbridge which will require COR individual axle group weighing and compliance. Regardless of the make or type – NWI Group manufacture every conceivable type of weighbridge – and whether the application is legal for trade (LFT) or just COR.

Most transport and logistics companies are concerned primarily with COR, not LFT. Many of these companies already have an inground, “stop-and-go” static axle WB or a weigh in motion axle WB – or if they don’t, this is what they are planning to purchase. These are all ideal for the NWI Cloud Portal.

Easy Retrofit to an existing WB. If you already have a functioning axle weighbridge at site that is weighing correctly, no problem. We can come over the top of that and plug it into our technology. NWI Group can retrofit our unmanned Driver Control Station taking serial weighing event data from the weighbridge and then merging that with our software and data capture and cloud export. That’s it. Very easy – and easy to standardise and provide national businesses with a fixed cost per site retrofit, enabling a national rollout of a standardised NHR COR data capture, compliance, analysis, and audit response strategy.

A nationally oriented, best in class approach to NHVR COR data capture and compliance is what every business should strive for. It doesn’t take that much more to achieve this – except for vision, will, and a forward-thinking imagination.

If all of this sounds interesting you, and you would like to learn more please feel free to contact NWI Group or contact me directly at Rhett.talley@nwigroup.com.au