FORGE.FABLES [#4] Intelligent Weighing and Test Monitoring System
“Commercially high-valued, innumerable consignments are transported across the country every day. From the drivers, cargo owners and the truck owners we met, there is a common concern for the increased cargo heist in certain routes, executed by highly organized gangs, who have a well-developed network in the grey market to sell their loots resulting in heavy losses for the cargo owners. For instance one of the logistic companies we surveyed, suffered a loss of Rs.10 crore in the last 15 years due to theft and robbery. Sometimes, well-armed thieves attack and kill the driver, and hence a lurking fear persists in the drivers, who on an average drive for around 400 km/day. Obtaining a strong proof to file FIR and to claim insurance for theft is also a tedious process.” says Sathiyan who is designing a real-time device that weighs the load on-board and alerts the driver and the cargo owner in case of robbery.
Building an onboard technological solution to reduce cargo heists
Sathiyan and Poorna Prasad, the engineering students from Kumaraguru College of Technology, hailing from a family that has witnessed the plight of truck drivers and cargo owners, who toil to safeguard their cargo, and drive on-time, are determined to innovate a technological device that monitors the load weight on-board throughout the journey and alerts the driver and the cargo owner when the weight falls below the actual one. They applied for iCAMP with this idea and at the end of the 6-day Innovation boot camp, they demonstrated a potential Proof-of-Concept[Poc] and got admission to the ProtoSem program, part of our pre-incubation program, FORGE.FELLOWS. ProtoSem is a 20-week comprehensive skills and competency development full semester program, where engineering students from different streams put their effort and time, into building a Prototype, under the mentorship of industry experts and technical mentors.
“During the first week of the ProtoSem program, Sathyan and Poorna pitched this concept as a part of the team building process, where at FORGE, we are encouraged to build teams with diverse skills and competencies, as every innovation demands a blend of technical and managerial capabilities. Visionaries have to pitch their challenge statement, its significance and marshal the hackers and hustlers, who will now form a complete team. As my father was a lorry driver and having lived through the insecurities, I was completely into this idea when Sathyan pitched this concept.” says Kousalya, who is pursuing BE[CSE] in KCT.
The Transportation industry contributes to around 8.2% of the Indian Economy. Among all the modes of transportation, Road transport is the predominant one and 86% of the road usage accounts for freight transport, in which 75% is heavy trucks and 11% for local transportation.
MUP First, MVP Next
“Immediately after building our teams, there were several ice breaker activities, intended to help us overcome the barriers, introduce team dynamism and orient our efforts towards building a disruptive product. Mr. Vish Sahasranamam, CEO, FORGE, elaborated the importance of reducing the risk of failure, with an ‘MUP first, MVP next’ approach. He explained to us that successful innovation is one, that is sold profitably when launched in the market and not the one with indefinitely numerous elegant features. And that the biggest risk is building an alluring product, that no one will buy and for the target customer to pay the price for the product, it must be worth something. So, the only way to reduce the risk is to prove that my product is worth to my customer. He directed us to get out of the building, move to the field where the beneficiaries reside and understand their concerns, the exact magnitude of the problem, solutions in existence, possible use-case, the adoption barriers, etc. Only after meeting and listening to the opinion of the drivers and consignment owners, we found that there is an optimal possibility to extend our idea and build a solution, that would solve 2 problems simultaneously-by building an onboard cargo weighing system, the time delay and cost occurring at the weighbridges could be solved significantly, apart from addressing the primary concern of consignment robbery.”
Even though drivers cover the goods with tarpaulins or wire meshes to protect them, the theft has not reduced. And moreover, they may not know that such an incident of robbery has happened until they inspect the vehicle at the next stop and many times only at the delivery point. So, filing an FIR to catch the robbers and claim insurance, is also troublesome. Sometimes, cargo owners fix a camera, that could be monitored by truck/cargo owners while carrying high-value goods. Now, having a device onboard, that keeps track of the load weight throughout and alerts in case of the weight falling below the original one would help them reduce the misery, and as well as generate a proof of theft and help them detect the exact amount of loss, leading to quick filing of FIRs and Insurance Claims.
Designing an Intelligent weighing system to reduce the dependency on weighbridges
The road condition and its durability is directly dependent on the following factors- the number of passing vehicles, number of axles, loads of axles and gross vehicles weighs. Heavy vehicles cause considerable damage of the roads and deformation of bridges along the journey, that are designed to bear only a particular weight and so to avoid this the transport departments have imposed limitations on the weight of the goods to be carried. As per Indian Transport rules and regulations, It is mandatory for every truck in commute, to carry only a stipulated load and by overloading more than the stated tonnage carrying capacity of trucks, the government loses revenues.
At present, Trucks from the loading site before starting the journey, have to travel to the nearest weigh-bridge/axle bridge, cross several roads before and after loading, to actually calculate the weight the load [Weight of the loaded truck — Weight of the empty truck]. The same process is repeated while unloading- It is laborious and an inefficient system. Due to Unreliability and lack of standardization across the weighbridges of the states, the cargo owners incur excess operational charges and fines. During Transit, when state authorities at checkpoints suspect overloads, the truck is directed to the nearest weighbridge. In case if there is no weighbridge near, the driver has to haul all the way until he finds one. Moreover, this process is time consuming, tiresome and only adds to the plight of the truck driver, who is already under pressure to meet their targets and deliver the consignment on-time.
To weigh this every single time, the cargo owner has to pay Rs.200 approx., that amounts to around Rs.1 Lakh per annum for a single truck and causes a delay for about 1 hour due to high-traffic at the weighbridge.
There are also portable devices such as HelperX, Millenium 5, etc. in dumpers and bulldozers and Sentinel, Loadman, Kimax, etc. in trucks, that operate with load cells installed on-board for each of the tyres. But the cost of a 30-ton load cell is approx Rs. 30,000, for each tyre amounting to Rs. 1,80,000 for a truck, which is costlier than weighing in a weighbridge/ axle bridge.
The solution should be a real-time retrofittable device, that is less costly, capable of being installed in different truck designs incurring low maintenance costs, and must be simple, so as to be operated and interpreted by an uneducated driver. They are working on the first version of the prototype at the HWjunction, an Innovation and Rapid prototyping lab that operates 24x7, with state-of-the-art facilities, machinery, and equipment required across the complete spectrum of the journey. Apart from this, they are also offered complete technical mentorship, assistance during field visits, one-one mentoring sessions, access to IP experts, meetings with industrial veterans, etc.
Their design calculates the load weight based on the change in the displacement of the leaf spring at the time of loading or unloading, and notifies the driver, truck owner, cargo owner and the representative of the insurance company, whenever there is a loss in weight. And also reduce the cost incurring due to weighing at weighbridges, and time consumption while searching for weighbridges.
“‘A startup is a failure only if you judge it against the expectations defined at the time it was started; But that a startup is an experiment to first prove the smallest potential of a business idea”
-an interesting approach introduced by Vish while elaborating the process that FORGE adopts to help Startups attain the pinnacle of a high-growth enterprise. He introduced the concept of Minimum Usable Prototype[MUP] built iteratively with only the critical features demanded by the customer to prove the worth of a solution intending to test value and fast-track the process, reduce the cost and risk factors. MUP when successfully deployed, used and experienced, proves beyond doubt the possibility of an efficient and cost-effective solution to the target problem, thereby creating a compelling case for this solution to be launched in the market as a product paving way for business building and enterprise creation. Had we not known all these, like any other startup founder/ innovator, we would have started to build a feature-rich product, assuming that our initial idea had an enormous business potential” says Kousalya, who believes that FORGE has completely altered her perception about a startup and geared up to rapidly building the prototype.
