Keeping tabs on 1300 vehicles throughout N.Z.

Press, 7 May 1987, Page 38

Keeping tabs on 1300 vehicles throughout N.Z.

If you have difficulty keeping track of records for your car — servicing, insurance, tyres, fuel, licensing and so on — imagine keeping tabs on more than 1300 licensed vehicles throughout New Zealand. That is the daunting task faced by local road transport company Transpac Holdings Ltd with one of the most extensive vehicle fleets in the country. Transpac’s trucks and trailers are in use six and even seven days a week, and sometimes up to 12 hours per day. Staff deal with thousands of clients and tens of thousands of tonnes of products on a daily basis, making the record-keep-ing a mammoth exercise. In order to stay on top of this avalanche of statistics, Transpac head office has installed a high capacity mainframe computer. It is a Unisys A3D

model using LINC software originally developed in Christchurch and now used worldwide for many data processing systems. Mr Peter McLean, Transpac’s management services manager, says the equipment has proved very effective for the role it has in the large transport organisation. “As with most LlNCbased systems we have generated our own programs to suit our particular needs,” he says. "While some of these are fairly standard procedures, others are specific to our work and the type of records we must keep because of the nature of our business.” One such system recently introduced is designed to analyse marketrelated data on a regular basis. The road transport industry is extremely competitive and companies wishing to succeed in this

environment must keep a critical eye on productivity and performance factors. Accordingly, the system monitors the latest information such as commodity types, distances, quantities, costs and other critical components. “What this means,” says Peter, “is that we can see trends emerging in time to correct imbalances, or reinforce positive developments. “With such a large and diverse number of variables in the equation, it is vital we keep right up to date with accurate and relevant information.” As Transpac’s work grows or diversifies, the LINQ system can easily keep pace to match growth or change. It also has the advantage of “user-friendliness” in being readily adaptable and quick to set up new software.