CBASS (Cement Booking and Scheduling System)
- CBASS™ Fact Sheet(346kb)
- CBASS™ Brochure (816kb)
CBASS is a system for booking and scheduling loads to supply customers with accurate promises of delivery times while maximising fleet utilisation.
For each working day, CBASS knows the mix of available vehicles, their working hours and exactly what trips have been booked against each vehicle. At the time of order placement CBASS is requested, by the ERP system, to offer possible offload times that are allowed based on current fleet commitments. By using estimated and learnt times for the tasks that make up the trip in question, CBASS can build up the time required to fulfill the request and analyses this against the current commitments to show possible offload times. Once a suitable time is chosen, this trip is added to the schedule and control returns to the ERP system.
On the day of delivery all first loads are manually assigned to vehicles. When a vehicle returns to the plant, CBASS is requested to dynamically allocate the next best load to minimize actual lateness of deliveries and to complete the committed schedule as close to planned as possible.
By integrating with GPS tracking, CBASS can follow the progress of each trip and update each task as they are completed. Knowing the status of all trips, CBASS is able to warn of possible late arrivals before they happen.
As CBASS has access to a high level of information on what was planned, and when and what actually happened, various management reports can be generated. (For example - schedule progress, late load discounting, quick turnaround discounts and transportation costings.)
CBASS sends SMS's to consignee's with the expected time of arrival once the load has been dispatched and is within a certain time of arriving at the site. This allows the consignee to be ready for the load and speeds up the turn around time.
Avi Bhoora, the sales and distribution manager at NPC, had the following to say about CBASS, “We wanted to be able to give the customer an expectation of time and date of delivery at time of order placement and manage that expectation until actual delivery was made, including the tracking of the delivery to ensure the requisite security, cost effectively. I believe that CBASS can do this and more, eg. Transportation costing, facilitating quick turn-around and late loads to improve fleet utilisation and efficiency."
