Where is the train,
and why has it stopped?

The desk

Every train, on your floor plan

Upload the floor plan you already have, or draw one in the tracker. Draw the aisles over it once, and the trains appear on it as they move: a tractor and its carriages in their own colour, following the aisles round the corners. Click one for its driver, its route, its next stop and when it last confirmed where it is.

• Alerts worth reading. A train that has not moved for ten minutes, one off its route, reversing or over its speed limit, and a tablet whose battery is going. A sign driven past without being read is flagged too, because a damaged sign is the first thing that goes wrong.
• Requests and messages. Send a train home or to collect bins from its balloon. The driver accepts on the tablet, and the job only counts as done once the camera has read the sign at that place.
• Kanban refill stops are kept apart from waiting. Time a train stands at a refill point is its own column in the report, not stopped time, and it raises no alert.
• A wall screen. One button puts the desk full screen for a television in the office, with every menu still there.

On the train

A tablet, and a web page

The driver has an ordinary tablet on a mount, Android or iPad, opening a page from the laptop over the works WiFi. There is nothing to install on it and nothing to manage. On an iPad, the first tap on the page asks for the motion sensors, once.

• The check comes first. Pick the train, pick your name, answer the pre-use checklist. A "No" stops the train and tells the desk.
• The camera reads the signs as the train passes and puts it where it is. In between, the tablet's own sensors tell moving from stopped, and the tracker carries the train along the aisle at the pace it has learned for that aisle, that train and that driver. It learns from every lap, says how sure it is, and a sign never makes the train jump on the map.
• It talks the driver round. A map that turns with the train, an arrow and a voice for the turns and the stops, a reminder to check for replenishments at each stop on the route, and a warning when the camera is off or the train is going too fast.

Before a train moves

Routes, timed before anyone drives them

Build a route by clicking its stops in order. The tracker plans the way round the aisles the way a tugger actually drives it, with no U-turns except where there is room to swing the carriages.

• Simulate a lap at the pace your trains have learned, leg by leg where they have driven it, with the minutes you allow at each stop, and see the lap time and how many laps an hour it gives, leg by leg.
• Change the minutes and the answer changes straight away, so the conversation about how long a stop should take has a number in it.

The numbers

Where the shift went

Every sign-on is a session: who, which train, how long, how much of it moving, stopped or at a kanban refill point, how many laps and requests, and whether the checks were passed. By day, week or month, for a driver, a train or a shift, and out to Excel.

Setting it up

Signs, one calibration, and a survey drive

The signs print from the tracker on an office printer. There are two ways to put them up and the tracker shows both: on the floor, with the tablet tilted down so it reads both sides of the aisle, or on the shelves behind the work stations, with the tablet turned sideways. Either way, the tablet is calibrated on the train once it is mounted.

Then one train drives a survey. The tracker plans a lap that covers every aisle, and the tablet talks the driver round it. Afterwards it draws three maps over the plan: where a sign is within the camera's reach, where the tablet's own sensors carry the train well between signs, and where beacons are heard if you use them. It lists where a new sign would help most, biggest gap first, and every sign that was driven past and not read.

• No drawing of the building? Draw one in the tracker, over a photo of the paper plan on the office wall: walls that snap square, room names and exits. It goes in use like an uploaded plan, and it opens again when the layout changes.
• Beacons, where a sign can't go. A doorway lorries drive through, or the yard. On Android tablets the tracker's own app also listens for Bluetooth beacons, and a spot on the map can have a sign, a beacon or both. They are optional: a site without them loses nothing.