Western Coalfields Limited (WCL) is a subsidiary of Coal India Limited, the country’s monopoly coal mining company and one of the largest in the world. WCL mines and transports coal in huge quantities on a daily basis. For transporting coal, it utilizes its own trucks as well as those of contracted vendors and truck operators. Tracking these trucks and the coal being transported over multiple trips is an enormous task, with considerable theft taking place during coal transport.\
1. Identify each truck automatically with minimal supervision.
2. Validate order completion of each trip within stipulated date.
3. Allow loading off ordered quantity only, with alert to the next truck that the order has been completed.
4. Tracking each trip with weight details so that correct payment is made as per actual trips made and quantity transported.
We proposed a RFID‐ based system that identifies trucks at the weighbridge and track their trips details along with their weight information, updates transactions and saves this information into the server as well as sends ittoSAP,theERPinuseby the company. This system enables automation and data updating in near real‐ time across remote locations within a large mining
area.
RFID Antenna‐Readers are installed at each weighbridge and at the IN and OUT gates. RFID tags are registered and affixed to all trucks. Wipro Vehicle Tracking System (VTS) software is installed at each remote location with SQL Server as their back‐end database. When connectivity is available at these remote locations, data is posted on the central server via a Message queuing server and completed trip transactions are sent to SAP.
