How to Automate Dispatch360
Dispatch360 covers the delivery: GPS tracking, order management, eTicketing with ePOD, a customer portal and an automatic feed from the batch plant. The reconciling happens elsewhere, in batch records, rate sheets, accounting and spreadsheets. A browser agent such as WebRun opens those, compares them and drafts what a dispatcher or biller sends.
Written by
Tom Kessler
Field operations analyst
Reviewed by
Ben Kirkwood
Solutions engineer
Concrete starts a clock the moment it is batched
Ready mix is the one product a plant sells that is going off while it is in transit. A load is batched, the drum turns, and there are only so many minutes and revolutions before what is in there stops matching the mix that was ordered.
Dispatch360 is dispatch software built around that problem. It comes from skEYEwatch and is aimed at construction materials operations: ready mix, volumetric, block and precast, aggregates, asphalt and paving.
A day in it looks like a queue of pours. Orders arrive with a mix, a yardage and a time on site. Trucks load at the plant, get tracked to the job, unload, wash out and come back. Tickets are signed on a tablet in the cab, water added at the jobsite is logged on the ticket, and the contractor follows it all from a customer portal. Dispatch, the scale house, the batch house and the trucks all talk on one push to talk channel.
Yards get poured long before anyone works out the billing
What follows a pour is a paper trail somebody assembles by hand.
Yesterday's delivered yardage has to be totalled by plant, job and mix and added to a running month, so the owners open on a number rather than a question. The batch plant's own record has to be lined up against what the tickets say, because overbatching, a short pour and a lost ticket look identical until the two lists sit side by side. Completed tickets have to be priced from a rate sheet into invoices, per project, each with a covering email.
The live side is harder, because it is a person staring at a screen. A truck has been on site past its free unloading time and demurrage is accruing that nobody will bill. A load is coming up on its time or revolution limit with nowhere to put it. Trucks are stacking up at one job while another waits. A crew has no idea the truck is eight minutes out and is not ready to pour.
eTickets close the load, the ledger stays open
The operational half of that is covered, and it is worth saying how well.
Fleet tracking keeps truck positions moving on the dispatch map in near real time. Order management holds an order from entry through to delivery confirmation with an audit trail behind it. eTicketing and ePOD put paperless tickets, water add logs and customer signatures on the driver's tablet. Batching integration flows orders from the plant batching system straight into dispatch.
Every one of those describes a truck, a load or a customer looking at a load.
The comparisons do not live there. Your accounting system is not dispatch software. The batch control system is a separate program with its own screens, so reconciling the two is a person reading both. The running month sheet is a spreadsheet. The site contact is a phone number. Quality control wants water added and drum turns pulled out of a week of tickets and looked at as a set.
A pour that adds itself up before the plant closes
The checks themselves are simple. They are numbers on a screen at four in the afternoon, which is when they get missed.
Batched yardage compared against delivered yardage by job and mix each day, so a short pour, an overbatch and a missing ticket stop looking the same. Yesterday's yards totalled by plant, job and mix into a running month, posted before the first order lands. Completed tickets drafted into invoices per project from your rate sheet, with the cover email written and both left for billing.
Through the day the reading happens in minutes rather than hours. Time on site tracked per truck, so a job past its free unloading time is raised while demurrage can still be billed. Batch time and drum revolutions watched on every active load, so one running out of time is called before it must be dumped, and any load past its water or turns allowance flagged for review. Trucks stacking up at one job spotted, with a reassignment drafted for dispatch to approve.
The split is one every plant already makes. Reading, totalling and comparing runs on its own. Redirecting a truck, texting a jobsite contact and sending an invoice waits for the dispatcher or the biller, because a crew that stands down on a wrong message costs more than the load.
Dispatch is a judgement call, the watching is not
Deciding which truck to pull off a job is a dispatcher's call. Noticing that a load has eleven minutes left on it is not a call at all.
WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens Dispatch360, the batch system or the accounting file, reads what each says, and writes the comparison where your plant already looks.
It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it. Anything that moves a truck, reaches a jobsite or bills a customer is drafted and waits for a person.
The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it signs into.
Questions people ask
Can it reconcile our batch records against delivered yardage?
Yes. It opens the batch system and Dispatch360 in turn, matches tickets to orders by job and mix, and writes the variances to a sheet. That works even where the two systems have no connection between them, because it reads both screens the way a person would.
Will it redirect a truck on its own?
No. When trucks stack up at one job it drafts the reassignment and puts it in front of dispatch to approve. Moving a truck changes somebody's pour schedule, so a dispatcher makes that decision every time.
Can it text the jobsite when concrete is on the way?
It drafts the message from the live ETA and queues it for dispatch to send. A crew that gets told the wrong time either stands around waiting or is not ready when the drum arrives, so a person releases each one.
10 ready-made Dispatch360 workflows
Each one names the apps it touches and the exact steps it takes. Open one to read what it will do, then turn it on.
Want one of these running on your own Dispatch360?
Show WebRun the process once and it will run it on schedule, in your own private browser environment.