Especially during the pandemic, remote maintenance of our weighing systems via TeamViewer is very convenient. It allows us to quickly assist our customers when problems arise. But nothing can replace personal contact with the people who work directly with the scales. A look at an on-site visit to the truck scale at the Seehafen Stralsund.
The wind whistles around the small container in Stralsund’s South Harbor as our systems engineer, Sharam Gödel, arrives there in the morning. Weighing clerk Daniela greets him with a cup of coffee. She had already posted a notice in the window before Christmas informing truck drivers that the vehicle scale south of the Rügen Bridge would be out of service today for maintenance.
Today, our EWP Essmann weighing program is being migrated to a new SQL database, and routine updates are scheduled. This is a task that, in theory, could also be handled via remote maintenance. However, it’s important for our employees to experience firsthand from time to time what the processes are like at a specific location. By talking with the weighing operators, they learn how they’re managing.
Repair to the weighbridge in a snowstorm
The HE-ÜWS 18 road vehicle scale, with a weighing range of 0.4 to 60 metric tons, was installed in 1994 at Stralsund’s South Harbor between the bulk material piles and the scrap yard. In addition to construction materials, paving stones, and scrap metal, fertilizers, grain, and oilseeds are weighed here—about 180,000 metric tons each year.
Aside from the usual maintenance intervals, regular software updates, the integration of new features and devices, and, of course, regular calibrations, this scale rarely sees one of our technicians. But when necessary—as was the case in March 2018—we’ll even head out in a snowstorm to help. The freezing temperatures, which dropped as low as -20 degrees, had finally taken their toll on a load cell that was nearly 25 years old and had served reliably up until then. Now it had to be replaced.
Optimize processes through adjustments
While Sharam Gödel runs the updates, he chats with weighmaster Dani about their daily routines. Over coffee, she talks about the days when ships are unloaded, causing 20 or 30 extra trucks to line up at the weigh station. On those days, things have to move quickly, because even the regular customers in the day-to-day business want to be processed efficiently.
Dani explains that sorting the yard list differently could help find the trucks for the second weigh-ins more quickly. Also, some of the information in the yard list search results isn’t relevant to the weighers in this situation and tends to be more of a distraction. And the fact that, in a rush, the row can easily be selected incorrectly—resulting in the wrong truck being chosen for the second weighing—and then the entire process has to be canceled sometimes holds up operations.
Sharam Gödel nods, takes a sip of his coffee, and turns toward the monitor. The updates are complete; now he can focus on the customizations that will make life a little easier for the weighers. Meanwhile, Dani climbs onto the wheel loader and tidies up the adjacent gravel pile.
Satisfied hunters are good hunters
At the end of the day, the Essmann weighing program EWP is running with a modernized database, new updates for digitalized operating procedures and some small but effective modifications that make the processes in the southern port of Stralsund easier for the weighers.
Do you need an update, an upgrade, or adjustments for your scale? You can reach our ESSMANN | Scales & Automation Support team by email at IT-Support@essmann.com. In urgent cases, please call +49 40 84000426.
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