TMW Announces Product Enhancements to Help Carriers Track, Analyze Data

This story appears in the Sept. 30 print edition of Transport Topics.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — TMW Systems Inc. announced upgrades and improvements to its products, as well as new integrations with third parties to help carriers track and analyze data.

The new offerings allow users to slice and dice their information in more ways through increased functionality and more powerful algorithms, said David Wangler, president of TMW.

“Over the last year, we’ve spent time trying to make things more digestible and more consumable,” Wangler told Transport Topics during the company’s user conference here Sept. 23.

TMW is part of Trimble Navigation’s mobile solutions division, which includes PeopleNet Communications Corp. and ALK Technologies. About 1,700 people attended the company’s user conference.

Wangler said the company has improved the TMW Data Warehouse platform so carriers combine content from multiple sources to see a more accurate business performance. The data warehouse gathers information from fleet maintenance software, electronic logs, finance and other programs.

“People have a variety of systems. Being able to combine all of that data is what you need to extract the truth,” Wangler said. He added that combining data from multiple sources is of growing importance to fleets.

James Langley, TMW’s vice president of business analytics, said users can use scorecards within the Data Warehouse to monitor the most important metrics more easily.

“Our people are doing too much — they don’t know which end is up, and they’re frustrated. You want them to understand what four to eight things matter most,” Langley said.

Also during the conference, Michael August, general manager of TMW’s asset maintenance solutions, displayed enhancements of TMT Fleet Maintenance and Service Center products, including upgraded touch-screen workstations with more job codes and room for mechanic comments.

“The algorithm is much more robust than the last time you were here. You can do a lot with it,” August told attendees. “The new algorithms support greater seasonality reporting of what inventory is in stock . . . and trend analysis.”

TMW said it no longer is charging clients that want to customize these reports.

The system “is so flexible you can filter on what you want in that report, and you can customize it,” August said.

Meanwhile, Scott Vanselous, chief marketing officer, told TT that TMW’s Appian research and development group “continues to improve their algorithms to create more robust networks” within the Appian product lines, which focus on routing and distribution.

New upgrades for Appian Direct

Route include an enhanced backhaul selection process. In addition, the Appian Transportation Modeler features a rating engine to assist in developing bids and choosing the optimal mode among private fleet, less-than-truckload and truckload options.

Additional highlights from the conference included:

• A new module for streamlined appointment settings and management within TMW Operations 2014.

• An updated user interface and new reporting capabilities for TMW Web products.

• The addition of Reid vapor pressure tracking within TMWSuite fuel dispatch/field services modules, as well as alerts when manual orders and automati-cally generated orders for a fuel-

delivery location create a

conflict.

• TruckMate 2013 now allows intermodal marketing companies to select rail and drayage carriers by cost, equipment type, container owner, preferred carrier and service type. It also includes chassis management enhancements, and the TM4Web portal user interface has upgraded

rate-quoting tools.

• The company’s TL2000 software for truckload carriers has a new graphical interface with configurable screens, new dashboard views and mapping visualization.

• Hours-of-service and electronic logging integrations to the company’s IDSC MatchAdvice have been updated to support the recent HOS rule changes.

• The company’s IDSC ExpertFuel 8.2 has new features such as additional pricing data integration to major fuel-card providers.

Trimble also announced last week that it will begin offering TMW’s TMT Fleet Maintenance software for the construction materials industry to the ready-mix and aggregate markets.