Scope

Challenges

  • Data processing
  • Data visualization
  • Processing large amounts of data
  • Legacy code
  • Time zone management
  • Lack of in-depth transportation knowledge

Technologies

Outcome

  • MySQL & MariaDB
  • Spring Boot (Java)
  • Angular
  • Highcharts (JavaScript)
  • Google Cloud
  • Figma
  • Closer monitoring of transportation data
  • Higher compliance with transportation security standards

Background

TachoSAFE is a complex digital tachograph data management solution, consisting of designated hardware and cloud-based data analysis and storage services, operated by SVT Electronics, a Romanian ICT company. SVT aims to provide unique and innovative solutions by tracking and analyzing their partners’ freight transportation data, thus enhancing their decision-making capabilities. Their portfolio includes efficient street and industrial lighting solutions, time tracking and access control systems, and sensors for industrial cooling also.

Tachographs are devices embedded in vehicles collecting speed, distance and driver activity data. In the past few years, SVT has been collecting such data from 35.000 freight transportation vehicles, generating a constantly growing cloud database, but they were still lacking cutting edge data processing and visualization technologies.

The aim of our project was to provide these solutions by implementing a reporting platform where all SVT partners can query their tachograph data and review the reports visualized in informative charts.

Challenges

We had to overcome several challenges throughout the project. The lack of transportation knowledge on our side was a handicap at the start, but technological issues came up also because of legacy code, disordered databases, and the new reporting technologies used for the implementation.

The basic concept was to keep the homogeneity of the already existing system, and supplement that with a reporting tool, so legacy code and architecture made the development process more difficult than building everything from scratch.

We had to process huge amounts of data that was stored in a redundant way, so we started with database reorganization in order to improve performance before getting to back-end and UI optimization that was necessary for properly rendering the charts and listing the data on the reporting pages with reasonable load time.

24-hour data records stored with different time zone settings caused another issue when running queries for certain days, so we came up with a solution that rearranged these daily records to the desired time zone.

Solution

We’ve managed to optimize our solutions from an architectural standpoint in a cloud environment as the whole reporting platform was built as a single-page application, using the resources of the client machine, while the back-end is stateless and easily scalable thanks to the Spring Boot pipeline.

The responsive UI was implemented as a separate module on legacy Angular codebase, communicating with the back-end through REST APIs. We have also designed the tile view of the main reporting screen from where the user can select the desired query and visualization options.

Charts were implemented as reusable components, using Highcharts Javascript library, and the module itself appears as a new menu item on the TachoSAFE website.

Thanks to our core methodologies, including Scrum and strict source code management principles, we could deliver high quality code in stable and valuable sets of features by the end of each sprint, ready to be released to production environment.

As a result, each SVT partner has an option on the site where they can access their tachograph data collected in the following type of reports:

  • Daily chart — driver and vehicle data collected for a customizable time range, listed in table view or visualized in charts
  • Data match — a validation tool for driver and vehicle data, listing deviations in drive time
  • Vehicle report — detailed list of vehicle data, including drivers, drive time, distance and notes
  • Checklist report — transportation data warnings and issues listed for drivers and vehicles
  • Infringements — driver rest time violation list and categorization
  • Driver attestation — driver activity list with categorization
  • Work hours — driver work activity list with categorization

Outcome

The reporting options implemented as part of the project are helping SVT clients to closely monitor their drivers and to meet transportation security regulations at the same time. The reports are exportable, and can be easily used for legal compliance.

Besides their business benefits, these reports serve as a great tool to raise awareness of safety among the drivers.