Traffic and Production Support

Hey, hey!!

It was a 'traffic-day' again for me ;)

That means, until lunch and even one hour after that, I joined the guys from the Norway- and Finland-traffic.
They have a similar system to the one the domestic traffic uses.
So they can see the bookings and put them on the lorrylines. Again it was interesting to see, how many loading-places are provided and especially how hard it is to find a very good solution for everyone, so the truck won't be driven empty from e.g. Oslo to Jönköping. But those guys have a lot of experiences, so they know their drivers and they know the area arround the destination- where possible customers are located, to import goods from Norway to Sweden.
Again, the drivers get all information on their phone or computer by this very handy application from Schenker. As I told you before, there, they have to accept the destinations and can receive SMS from the forwarder.
The Finland-traffic has to deal with ferries everyday, so they are quite busy to check if the driver has accomplished his duties so he will be in time for the ferry, because there are only a few of them. One at 9 o´clock in the morning, then there is one at 11 and another one at night.
I think we all know the problem of ferries. They do not go very often and it takes always so much time to arrive and they are always punctual when it comes to the departure ;)

After lunch I had to join the terminal... ookay, that was actually said, but afterwards I stayed with another guy from the Norwaytraffic and he was SO incredible. Somehow he didn' stop to talk! All of the others were a bit shy and insecure while speaking English, but he was soooooo confident of himself and his job, that it was a pleasure to listen to him! He again explained how they arrange the transport routes and showed me on Google Maps where all those towns are located, haha ;) He is really skilled in his job and I noticed how much fun he has in this job!

After a short time I was taught a bit about the Production Support and the Indata department by one very skilled man.
First, he introduced me to the Production Support, which is.. something like a department for everything what can happen  during the whole transport, starting with the collection and ending with the discharge at the customer. So this department is responsible e.g. for all the damages which can occur at the interfaces.
Another thing they check, is the system, which shows the drivers what they have to load etc.
It's not only this, but moreover it is a backup for the forwarder, because the driver and the terminal, depends where the good is during the transport, have to register every step they do.

I tried to outline it a bit on the right side. As you can see, that's the first thing, after accepting this trip, is to register, when he loads the goods and then every reception, every new part has to be registered. Otherwise there would be an error in this department, and the forwarder has to do everything to find the error. As I think of it now, it's similar to GPS, because you can see what has happened, or not happened to the consignment ;)... The sketch is only an example.
If there would be a direct load, it would be just the registration of collecting and discharging the consignment.

Then, he spoke about the various systems they use for correcting errors etc.
Actually there was one very interesting programme, which I thought, would be impossible, because otherwise, some day the computer can rule the world, haha.
It's the system for e.g. the scanned EDI-lables and specifications on the goods, because there is a programme which filtres right ones from wrong ones. Don't ask me how, but anyway, it can see, if there is e.g. a mistake in the postcode of a town. Then it pops up in this system and the Indata and Production Support has to change it, because from this point, work stays still until it is corrected.

It's completely insane, that there is a programme, which can identify what has been done wrong, even the consignor doesn't know! Like today, there was a lable with EE instead of SE on it. The consignment would have been forwarded to Estonia instead of Sweden, but the system noticed this and stopped further actions.
Is it only me, who is impressed by this? I'mean, it's crystal clear, that nowadays, time of Internet and so on, everything is connected and can be found very quickly, but... it just confuses me... o.O..

Ha, you see, I end up with confusing myself, but it's already late, and there were so many impressions ;) So, see you tomorrow and good night ;)