In terminals and large warehouse complexes, the weighing of trucks and rail cars is one of the mandatory processes to control the supply chain.
The obligation to weigh cargo is a requirement of the shipper, which imposes significant costs on the terminal or warehouse:
- Setting your own or renting weights
- Recording and weighing
- Cargo management and route optimization
The difference between loaded and empty trucks indicates how much cargo arrived and was sent. This process eliminates errors in the loading process on the basis of documents received with the cargo and formed during the weighing process. So you can eliminate the loss of cargo in transit.
Accurate accounting of cargo during acceptance allows you to avoid future problems with customs in case of shortage of cargo balances, inform the client about how much cargo actually arrived, or is sent in his direction. In addition, accurate accounting is necessary when loading not the entire batch of goods, but only a part of it, so it is imperative to stop the loading or unloading of the vessel on time.
If the weight scales are not integrated into the warehouse or terminal management system or do not allow real-time tracking of several batches of goods at the same time, such weighing work is a constant calculation of batches, moreover, these manipulations are done manually. For such cases, it’s good if data is typed-in Excel forms, and not written in a notebook. In any case, with a manual recording of cargo weighing, one cannot avoid mistakes and recalculations for the formation of weighing acts, on the basis of which invoices are compiled. For certain types of cargo at bulk terminals, such as grain or salt, weather conditions under which loading or unloading is carried out are of great importance. The vessel can be loaded or unloaded for 2-3 days, while terminal operators need to constantly tidy up the rest, switching from other tasks that they perform during working hours when it rains, for example. This becomes a real problem for both executors and terminal management, as the accounting errors are included in the documents used to report to receive money, the search for errors and their correction is an additional working time, which is also expressed in money for all participants of the process.
To facilitate the work of stevedores and ensure the accuracy of calculations for terminal managers, we at the Marine Digital System created a weighing management system – an electronic weighing log and a module for automatically creating and printing standard transport documents for cargo. With the weighing module, it is possible to carry out several parallel weighing processes at the same time, keep records, provide it to the client and stevedore loading manager online, transfer to any customer system (warehouse and accounting, electronic document management system and others). If a client has modern scales with sensors that allow for the exchange of data, then you can integrate the system, eliminating the risks of errors due to the human factor. Even if the scales do not have the ability to integrate or are rented, there is a solution for reading data directly from the scoreboard: photo and video analytics, including a camera and recognition tools, will transfer the necessary data to the system, the operator can only confirm the correctness of the data.
How does the Marine Digital System weighing management system work?
Thus, the processing of each truck loading and unloading is accelerated for 2-3 minutes and we eliminate the errors of manual input and retyping of data in accounting systems. The economic efficiency of the weight module is obvious: when unloading a large vessel, there can be 400 trucks approaches, which is about 10-12 hours of working time. This is an important indicator for the driver, who in most cases is paid not for the time, but for the tonnage, and as well for the terminal management, whose cost savings will be up to 300 euros per vessel, not to mention the fact that subsequently, you do not need to spend time searching for documents and amending them due to detected inconsistencies and related fines.
Increasing the efficiency at this part of the supply chain allows the terminal to offer attractive prices without reducing margins, increases the loyalty of existing customers and attracts new customers, providing resources without expanding the staff and not attracting additional capacities.
You can get free access to the weight control system: test the functionality and ask questions to specialists at https://marine-digital.com/weight-module
Source: trans.info
