How to create a cloud service for managing and controling detour routes at enterprises?
Sergey Dudik
July 22, 2022
3 min
Table Of Contents

How to create a cloud service for managing and controlling detour routes for businesses

A lot of mechanisms and equipment are located at the big enterprises. An integral workflow in such companies is a specific route of checking and making notes about equipment.

Some enterprises have electronic data and equipment parameters, but others do not. A lineman (who checks the routes) sometimes doesn’t know the parameters of tools and whether he should tell the manager about damaged equipment. Usually, an employee walks around the route, writes everything down in a journal and returns to his workplace.After that, he or the manager manually enters the data into another journal or electronic system.

Engineer perfoming tasks from checklist in TARGPatrol App
Engineer perfoming tasks from checklist in TARGPatrol App

The human factor plays a huge role here. As we know, any equipment may break down, and its emergency repair will be impossible or significantly more expensive than planned. Besides, equipment can be damaged within a certain time. When making a bypass and checking the equipment, an employee may detect violations, but forget to note them. Similarly, the manager may make a mistake when entering data. All this can lead to serious failures.

So, I would like to tell you a real story that happened several years ago.

One well-known company contacted us and requested additional functionality for our software, which they have been using for a long time (TARGControl cloud time attendance system). When we looked through their problem with process automatization, we were very surprised and horrified.

An application capable of solving their problem should have the next functionality:

  • Controlling the timely detour of routes by employees.

  • Accounting of employees’ actions when passing routes

  • The ability to receive photo and text notifications from checkpoints.

  • Generation and Storing reports throughout the entire period of usage.

  • The formation of a route bypass system

To begin with, we have expanded our already existing system. We developed an application for Android. For the web-version, we added bypass points and formed necessary routes for lineman.

Our solution turned out to be effective. We implemented the client’s request. Therefore, now TARGPatrol is an independent product including a full web-version and a mobile Android offering that was written in Java / Kotlin.

In the web-version, the “Route” module consists of the next sections:

  • Global report on routes.

  • Point report (report on a specific point for a specified time interval).

  • Parameters report (report on equipment indicators, taken by the relevant personnel).

  • Control tags(in this section if you create (QR) or add an existing (RFID) control tag).

  • Routes (creation of routes, using tags, entered into the system)

  • Route schedule.

  • Graphic plans.

The APP allows you to:

  • Authorize the application by special card or personal PIN.

  • View routes and their checkpoints.

  • View the route schedule.

  • The ability to leave text and photo information at each control point. You can take a picture of the indicators or leave additional information if, for example, there is an emergency at the facility.

  • Tag registration without manually entering the tag codes into the system (the mobile app does it for you

  • Replacement of the same tags, in case of malfunction of one of the tags, its code can be easily replaced with the code of a new tag in all routes at once.

Below, I’ll try to describe a setup process. So, to complete the work process, we need the following equipment:

  • RFID tags.

  • TARGPatrol app

  • TARGPatrol web-version for administrator

Let’s talk a little about tags. RFID tags are suitable for locations with difficult conditions - they work at temperatures from -20 to 200 С. Also, you can use QR-codes as tags.

Creating routes in our system

We put a group of tags into our system, then we add RFID tags. When we create a tag, we usually write a name, choose the type, enter the code and create lines for taking notes.

Create the routes. We enter the name, select the color of the indicator, choose tags. We set the time to pass the point and the route is ready.

A schedule is the last thing that we do: we specify the date/time of the tours, select employees, who will make the tour along the specified route, and check the box next to the “Take into account the order of the tour” field, so that the tags are read in the order specified in advance. There is also a possibility of additional schedule settings, such as “Consider start time” and “Consider end time”. Employees going through the route have to start and finish the route only at a specific time (with a valid interval).

So, its time to start the route!

After passing the route, all the necessary data is recorded in the cloud system. An employee can be calm about providing it to management. Management personnel can detect abnormal indicators and send workers to fix the problem, which will avoid an emergency shutdown.

So, as we see, after the implementation of the bypass route solution, the enterprise no longer needed to keep paper logs and all route reports can be viewed on the TARGPartrol web-version. A useful feature was also the implementation of notifications into the messenger. Due to this, the management could always know if the employee had any violations during the route.


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