5M’s dispatch system is designed to alert dispatchers of many events,
and provide them with suggested solution to quickly and effectively resolve any potential conflict
It’s a fact of life that even the most carefully laid plans can fail at the first challenge. In the Paratransit world, even minor events throughout the morning can cascade into major problems later in the day. Because of this, every good paratransit dispatch system must offer many routing capabilities to keep pace with daily operations—a challenge which comes with more serious ramifications than simply saving a route
A great routing system that fails to provide an equally impressive dispatching system is of no value to your operation, and so a truly great router must provide a dispatch system capable of predicting—in advance—events that may adversely affect your operations—and bringing them to the attention of dispatchers and managers in adequate time to maintain smooth operations and prevent planned routes from unravelling.
Detecting, predicting, and sounding the alarm—5M’s Adaptive Dispatch System constantly compares and assesses routes-in-progress against pre-defined service-level agreements and performance requirements. If a deviation from the planned schedule is detected that may cause a performance violation, 5M’s forecasting algorithm assesses the risk to the integrity of the entire route. In the event of the unexpected, 5M pre-emptively warns your dispatchers [with an illuminated icon] that brings their focus directly to the problem and displays the extent of the potential violation—giving them sufficient time to react. For example, as 5M detects an excessive delay in a route-in-progress, or detects that a route is departing later than expected due to a possible driver absence, it may issue a Late-Trip-Alarm—quickly alerting dispatchers of the delay. This happens simultaneously as the Adaptive Dispatch System recommends solutions such as alternative vehicle routes for upcoming trips. As dispatchers begin to filter through alarms to find their cause, 5M can provide them with suggestions as to how to resolve these alarms—suggestions which can be readily adopted by dispatchers, allowing them to resolve issues in seconds. Dispatchers may also override these automated suggestions and implement their own alternatives. When dealing with several hundred trips per hour—without such a comprehensive alarm and solution suggestion system—it is highly likely that even the most proficient dispatcher will fail to resolve many such events in time.
With the Adaptive Dispatch System’s interactive visual map, dispatchers can rapidly preview and examine route changes such as inserting or removing trips from one route to another. With this map and it’s easy to understand visual tools, the Adaptive Dispatch System allows dispatchers to very quickly evaluate multiple route choices and identify problem areas before committing them to a new route. And once a dispatcher finalizes their decision, 5M automatically informs the assigned driver, and will continue to monitor their performance along the newly updated route.
Almost every paratransit service provider, despite their best efforts, will end up with unassigned trips during their daily operations. Some are “will-call” trips, others are simply previously assigned trips that may’ve had a change in pick up times. Still others will be trips that the router could not accommodate because of a lack of available assets. 5M’s extensive suite of visual tools, including the “Slider”—a scroll-bar-style timeline that can display unassigned trips over a specific time frame—as well as a comprehensive suite of manual trip assignment utilities, and it’s integrated dynamic router enable the dispatcher to view these unassigned trips, and manage them with ease.
The best planning and routing can only reduce service interruptions. Challenges, expected and unexpected, start anew each day as resource availability and incidents. ITSS Dispatch provides a dynamic and rich tool for dispatchers to monitor and modify routes as the day progresses.
