Computerworld - Pepsi Bottling Group wants to dispatch its service technicians as quickly as possible, which means finding the worker closest to a given location.
Five years ago, this would have required numerous radio calls back and forth between technicians and the dispatcher. Not anymore.
Somers, N.Y.-based Pepsi Bottling, along with a lot of other companies, has taken advantage of the more than $10 billion the U.S. Department of Defense invested in developing the 24-satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) and installed GPS receivers in its fleet of service trucks.
Pepsi has equipped each of its service trucks with Garmin GPS 35 receivers from Olathe, Kan.-based Garmin International Inc., a division of Cayman Islands-based Garmin Ltd. The devices, which have a suggested retail price of less than $200, can locate a vehicle within 10 meters.
Pepsi uses a packet data network operated by Atlanta-based Cingular Wireless to continuously transmit location information from the GPS receivers in its service vehicles to the company's eight call centers. There, the latitude and longitude information is translated into ZIP codes, with a dispatcher matching a call for repair by ZIP code with truck location information.
Within seconds, the closest vehicle is digitally dispatched -- all part of a process designed to get a technician with the right parts to a customer within three hours or less, according to Ray Oliver, Pepsi's director of operations.
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