Monitoring overloaded vehicles : improving traffic control centre performance by using management information systems

Abstract

Decision making is an important function of management and to facilitate decision making that is relevant to any organisation, it is imperative that managers have the correct information at the right time. Since the 1990?s, the Transport Systems and Operations research group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) started developing a Management Information System to assist road traffic authorities and vehicle load control centres in decision making. A management information system is a combination of devices, software, data and procedures designed to address the collection and processing of information with the aim of providing management with relevant information for decision making purposes. This paper describes a management information system (MIS) developed and implemented in the Western Cape Province since 2006 and recently in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, to assist road authorities with heavy vehicle load control. Since its implementation in the Western Cape average overloads has shown reduction from 755 kg in 2006 to 529 kg in 2015, part of the reduction in average overloads can be credited to the use of the MIS. The benefits gained by the road authorities are many and includes the ability to identify operational problems in near real time; monitor scale operator?s performance; to identify problematic hauliers who overload vehicles deliberately; to monitor operational performance and schedule shifts accordingly. The management information system has proved to be successful and useful, as management is able to track irregularities and reduce corruption. Operational performance has improved as underlined by management increasingly requesting training of scale operators to bridge the gaps identified by the system.