Product

OPS (Operations Performance System)

Data science

OPS dynamically monitors your operations, taking a variety feeds from industry standard location systems (independent of mode) to provide dynamic network performance results, including complex location mapping and playback. We calculate live performance, and can predict future performance or calculate a variety of live or test KPIs, to test how you would have performed under different conditions. Flexible outputs can include formal reporting to third parties. The back-end includes an industry-leading “off the shelf” analytics tool for complex performance analytics, and live web dashboarding for publising your current performance to your business users or clients.

How can I monitor my network’s performance in real time, calculating a variety of KPIs in a dynamic way?

Product
OPS

Expertise
Data science

Client

Industry

Project type

Geography

Year

Website
www.ops-tech.net

OPS (Operations Performance System) shows visually and with associated data outputs how a network is performing under different KPI conditions. It takes industry standard vehicle, vessel or system location inputs and plots locations on maps. Complex algorithms in-fill where location data isn’t perfect (it usually never is) and provide a prediction layer, allowing you to calculate how you’re performing currently, and how you’re likely to perform in future.

Live calculations provide direct control-room feedback, and longer calculations determine how you’re going against your ongoing reporting periods. Reporting for each period can be automated so your teams or your clients receive automated outputs, or bespoke views of the performance dashboard.

How it works.

OPS tracks your vehicle and frequently records its location and other operational data if available, such as velocity or heading. The necessary schedule and vehicle information is combined (using your timetable/schedule and vehicle ‘block’ diagrams, or public data sources such as GTFS-RT feeds). Live changes to the fleet can be quickly incorporated into OPS.

We then accurately estimate the arrival and departure times of your vehicle at a scheduled stopping location, which is triggered by a tuned geofence event. Our dynamic algorithm can predict, interpolate, recalculate, or fill-in missing data points, allowing you to see exactly where your vehicles are or were, and will be, and maintain accurate tracking through unscheduled disruption events.

With the analytics back-end and mapping software, you can visualise and playback any vehicle’s historical locations and performance. Data outputs can be configured (e.g. automated calculations for non-compliances, or notifications to users). Geofences can be configured for no-go areas, or safety monitoring on the network if you need to know if vehicles are entering high-risk areas.

You can measure live performance exactly as your contracts require, or test different performance measures historically (as we keep all your data for ongoing analysis). There are bolt-on prediction tools so your live running systems can query location predictions via API or database queries if you need that too.

Visualise your performance

We show vehicles/vessels on a map so you can see where they are and what they’re doing. We can create bespoke schematics if you’d prefer.

Algorithms to infill missing data points

Where your location system isn’t complete (e.g. SCADA measuring points) our algorithms, based on your operational characteristics and data, will determine where vehicles or vessels are between measurement points.

Playback incidents

We record all vehicle or vessel positions over time, so you can track individual movements over time or at a single point of time. You can see how the network was running at critical points in your performance cycle.

Calculate KPI performance

We use your KPI rules to calculate precise performance. No KPI is too complex. We can give you instantaneous results, or how you’re tracking towards each reporting period. The results can be shared via a dashboard or automated reports. We can add in geofences so you can get alerts for non-compliance or early warnings of problems.

Test alternative KPIs

Want to know how you would perform under different metrics? No problems. Because we store all the data, we can test different KPI thresholds, measurements or results historically and currently. This is especially important for contract renegotiations or tenders where you may need to agree to enhanced metrics. This allows you to test how you currently perform to negotiate the best outcomes. We can also test abatement or disruption scenarios by simulating the network under bespoke modifications.

Patronage allocation algorithm

If you have customer check-in – check-out data available, OPS will use the real arrival and departure time information it has calculated, to assign customers to specific vehicles using cascading logic for the most likely travel patterns. It will even assign passengers to multiple vehicles when transfers were made. This is particularly useful for quantifying and analysing your network utilisations, which enables customer focused KPIs to monitored, such as a patronaged-weighted arrival delay, to improve customer outcomes.

Sense checking algorithms

If your network operations have complicated patterns or conflicts, e.g. loops or on-the fly changes to stopping sequences, OPS will identify discrepancies and automatically select and remove the outliers.

OPS whitepaper

Want to read more about what OPS does and can?

Monitoring KPIs for Sydney’s Ferries

OPS is being used to monitor the on-time-running performance of Sydney’s ferries. The vessel locations are sent to OPS, which then builds a performance model (by combining the timetable and vessel allocation) to determine whether the fleet is running on time (and to its threshold). It has also been used to trial alternative KPI metrics (different delay thresholds, different measurement points) so that the customers can be sure that they’re getting the most robust service possible. The mapping overlay is used in the operational control room, and the simple web output is used by the business to track the current day’s live operating performance.

NEWSFLASH: OPS and Harbour City Ferries won runner up in the “Excellence in Moving People” category at the 2018 Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport of Australia Awards for Excellence

About OPS.

Public transport operator

OPS provides live and historic KPI calculations to monitor and track your own KPIs. Useful where you don’t have complex systems to measure your current KPIs, or your client measures KPIs for you, leaving you in the dark about how you perform, what the root cause is for problems, and how to improve your performance. It is enormously useful where you have to re-tender for contracts as it puts you in control of your own operational data. No data set or KPI calculation is too complex as we build the precise calculations to match your network. It is quick to set-up and deploy.

Logistics terminal operator

OPS can determine how your terminal is operating, who is late delivering goods, who is early, where vehicles take more time than they should to pass through the terminal, who the best operators are, how different truck types progress through your terminal, and how you’re performing on compliance and efficiency. OPS takes feeds from your existing network systems, including terminal loading systems, internet of things (IoT) systems, or traditional SCADA-based check points.

Authorities (port, terminal, public transport) and government bodies

You can monitor how your network of operators is working. OPS will measure peformance, issue custom alerts and even produce non-compliance enforcement outputs for you to send directly to your operators. It is flexible enough to work with any data source, so you don’t need to re-build the underlying databases – we can take feeds from your existing systems. This will allow you to ensure that your operators are working in the best, most efficient and compliant ways.

About OPS

Mobility affects us all and is one of the key drivers for an efficient economy. A technological revolution is causing the industry to rapidly change, driven by the vast availability of high quality data. Now is the time to put this data to use and fuel innovative initiatives. When our clients started saying that they couldn’t properly monitor their KPIs, or that they were given KPI results without knowing in detail how they were produced, we decided to rise to the challenge. We have dedicated ourselves to boost efficiency and innovation by using data to its full potential and OPS is one of the key parts of that vision. We combine our years of experience in the mobility sector with creativity, pure data science and our love for coding to build the applications of tomorrow. The availability of enormous amount of computing power in combination with multiple new data sources ask for a new approach in the industry. Gone are the days of guesswork in KPI mapping, and gone are the days of big, expensive, hardware-driven platforms. Our goal is to provide insights and boost performance while doing what we love. Interested in what we can do for you? Check out our demos, our solutions or get in touch. We would love to hear from you!