Trailer Tracking App Gets IBM i Hooks

June 26, 2012 Alex Woodie

TrackPoint Systems last week announced that the latest release of its trailer tracking application, called CONNECT, has been verified to work with Innovative IES, the IBM i-based trucking dispatching application from TMW Systems. TrackPoint worked with IBM i experts at Add On Systems to complete the integration.

TrackPoint develops software that helps trucking companies keep track of their trailers while they’re in use in the field. The company’s main products are CONNECT, a Web-based application that gives companies detailed information about the state of individual trailers, and the Tr/IPS Master Control Unit, a solar-powered device that installs on the trailer and sends load and GPS information to CONNECT via the GSM cell phone network. The Nashville, Tennessee-based company also sells temperature, door, and load sensors that communicate wirelessly with the Tr/IPS unit.

As a result of work that TrackPoint did with Add On Systems (AOS), users of the Innovative IES dispatching system can now view trailer tracking data and ping their trailers for real-time location directly from their 5250 screens. This eliminates the need to separately log in to CONNECT to view the data and ping the trailers from a Web browser.

It’s another feature in the cap of AOS, the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based company that does a lot of work with trucking users of Innovative IES and TL2000, another IBM i-based dispatching system owned by TMW. The vendor sells its services and middleware, such as the Trailer Monitoring and Management system called TMMi, to third-party developers of untethered trailer tracking (UTT) systems, like TrackPoint.

TrackPoint also announced a new release of CONNECT that features improvements in the areas of configuration, auditing, mapping, and user experience.

Customers will get more fine-grained control over what conditions its TR/ips devices will report back to CONNECT. New audit trails and graphical displays will provide clear-cut visual confirmation of what trailers are doing and who put them into action. Sensor data and device status is now presented more clearly, as is the updated mapping and route tracking capability, which gives customers the choice of satellite or bird’s eye views.

For more information, see www.trackpointsystems.com or www.addonsystems.com.