Taxi Driver Online

Hi, good to read the forum. we are going though the voice to data issues at the moment. looks like aurgia is the one. We have 30 cars/vans.
Issue: won't be using RF but CDMA, due to mountainous area in NZ.
does anyone have experience or info on CDMA / aurgia over mobile network.
Issue: go for Evo 3 or the smaller based system. Have seen Evo3 but seems over kill for 30 cars.
Issue: What is the helpdesk like: value ? skills ?
Issue: Integration of Database and financial systems, for accounts etc.

hear from yous soon

Later Dave

Hi Dave,

I have an issue with Auriga's accounts system, but that is only because we work on a cashiering system where drivers pay in every night as employees rather than owner drivers. Our system runs more like that of a bus company. The problem I found with Auriga was that the accounts system being a separate database to the control system, meant that the controll staff could not cash in the drivers very easily on a shift based working system, Auriga being more suited to owner-driver networks. As such, people I know with Auriga who work a similar system to us, have been forced to go to weekly accounting.

Don't know if thats any help to you.

Andy

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There is Significant Unmet Demand for my Opinion.

cgull wrote: if the call back doesnt work it says knock on the door.
how the f*** do you get a person in a busy pub. which door do you knock on.

This message is configurable. The message format would have been agreed during the evocab user course. Speak to someone in charge and ask for it to be changed to something else, if you can think of a better message.....

One improvement I found, it is used to say 'callback unsuccessful', which was too close to 'callback successful'. It's useful that it at least say 'callback failed'.

still not that fast.slower than sirius.
jobs keep going to the wrong areas. drivers keep passing one another.
yet to see a good reason for drivers.

Hi
I have been told that evocab is supposed to have a must faster and efficient dispatch engine than Sirius.

The idea of the new system is that the "Autopilot" is never turned off (staff cant do that on the new system) so when a job comes back as a transmission failure the operator can deal with it and the other work will continue to be dispatched.

As for cars running by each other? I take it you have gps?

regards

yes.

Of course your zones could be completely wrong?

Got the attributes wrong.

It can't be Auriga's fault.

Actually Cgull from what others say the first few weeks are always a disaster, but the fine tuning sorts it out eventually.

And only four weeks to Christmas

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

Evo may seem slower than Sirius - mainly because you can see jobs going from Sirius all the time (watch jobs appear then disappear straight away).

Evo uses an intelligent despatch method. It takes up to 15 seconds for a job to be despatched. During this time, the system is considering every vehicle to do every job. It is considering each vehicles zone in relation to the job (the closer zone to the job the vehicle is, the more chance it is going to get the job), it is considering how long the job & vehicle has been waiting. The longer a vehicle waits, the more chance it has of getting a job. The longer a job waits for despatch the more important it is, so the more chance it has of being despatched. The system is doing all of this every second - taking 15 seconds to consider other vehicles going soon to clear or clear, other jobs coming up and special vehicle or driver requests.

The jobs will then chosen for despatch will be given out and the cycle will begin again. This is why it seems slower. It will however ensure the best vehicle is given the job, and should stop the wrong job being given to the wrong car (i.e. in the instance where a 6 seater was given a 'normal car' job, which then had to be recalled so the operator could give the 6 seater a 6 seater job waiting for despatch instead). Finally, the despatch method can be changed for different times of the day. You may, for example only be pulled automatically one or two zones during the rush hour, but may be pulled 10 zones at night, when it is quieter.

As for vehicles being pulled incorrectly to cover jobs, this is either because search scripts assigned to zones are incorrect (you may feel the search scripts are too long), or because operators are overriding the system and giving the job out manually.

The system seems slower, but is working much better. 'This is slow' comments were probably also made when you got the Sirius system in. The more you use the system, the quicker you get.

As pointed out by others, the process by which jobs are despatched is so different, that there is a 'bedding in period' during which time things will be up in the air. A couple of weeks after the system goes live are needed to get everything working correctly. This is also a great time for drivers to comment on where they feel the zoning has gone wrong.

Autopilot does run all the time - even if the despatch screen is not open!

Hope this helps a little.

Thanks for that " Intheknow" I don't know if it helped CGull, but I certainly found it very interesting. More of this on the site, please !!!
Why don't the suppliers put this sort of stuff in their brochures instead of photos of inconsequential garbage and waffle-speak.

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There is Significant Unmet Demand for my Opinion.

Well that is interesting In The Know.

And quite contrary to what Auriga say at their roadshows.

For example if there are 3 cars in the same zone (no matter how big the zone is) it CANNOT give the two jobs waiting to the two nearest cars. It will automatically give it to the first two available.

So if you have a zone 5 miles by 5 miles. One car 30 yards from the pick up and one 4 miles away it will automatically give it to the first car free in that zone.

If you have one wheelchair vehicle on the road it won't realise that there is a wheelchair job in 15 minutes, so not to send that car on an hour run out of town.

The decision making process you describe only considers jobs that need actioning at that moment.

Evocab claims to be very clever, with its Optimiser feature, but it can't despatch a car that is closest to the pick, no matter how close it is.

I could be wrong, but these are the answers given to me at Roadshows I attended last year.

BTW. Where is the CT4000? Still being beta tested? Been on imminent release for 15 months now. I know someone who ordered them 9 months ago.

Does it have turn by turn navigation working?

Will they drop the CT4000 for XDA's in coming months.

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A member of the Hire or Reward Industry

If they have got any sense.

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IDFIMH

doesnt change over from the old systemn very well.
we still get sent to the old points.
and there is no way it gives to the nearestr driver.
doesnt happen no way end off.
got a jobtoday dropping. and was miles away.
went past several drivers booked on that point.
intelligient it is not.
yet to see why we bought it.

It's probably down to one of the earliest tenets of information technology:

Garbage in, garbage out!

(Probably not the best analogy, since I'm referring to the programming rather than the raw data on the jobs.)

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Tom Thumb - If you have a zone 5 miles by 5 miles in an area where enough work is generated to warrant two or more cars waiting there, then you should think about making it smaller

You are however correct that if there are two (or more) cars in a zone, the one waiting the longest is more likely to get it. This is the same for every driver on the fleet, so levels the playing field.

Consider that the smallest size for a GPS zone is somewhere around 1/2 a mile (minimum) in the direction that the vehicle travels (so does not necessarily need to be a square), it could [i]almost[/i] be closest car.

Note also that the optimiser is different to the 'points' part of the automatic despatch. The scheduler considers the best vehicle based upon points. The optimiser will consider the points, but also consider if more jobs can be desptached, by pulling vehicles a little further - something a good despatcher would do when needed.

Finally, I don't know much about the CT4000's - I think they are at two sites in the uk.....

Cgull - if you were pulled past other vehicles you need to advise the office. This should not be happening.

It would be either because they are running automatic despatch with a despatch rule that is inappropriate for the time of the day, or the pull scripts are wrong, or the job was manually despatched.