Fleet Management System for Sri Lanka Port Authority

Abstract

Port Authority is one of the busiest places in Sri Lanka. It has a considerable fleet of vehicles and most vehicles transport customer’s goods. When vehicles leave the Port Authority, the driver has to fill a form and submit to the gatekeeper. The vehicle must return to the Port from the same gate and not from any other gate. This is an inconvenient process causing several problems. Number of other problems prevails such as time waste after finishing the job by the driver, inability to find the exact location after completing the job, and the customer needs to reach harbour to reserve a vehicle. Main purpose of this thesis is to provide solutions to above issues by introducing affordable new system using UFR Card Reader, Mifare Cards, Raspberry pi device, and GPS tracker. Initially, a comprehensive literature review was conducted comparing the existing systems. Most of the systems can manage the internal vehicles but they are not programmed to reserve vehicles. Few systems use RFID technology to track vehicles but raspberry pi device is not used in their systems. Proposed SLPA system consist of an administrator, staff, driver, and the customer. There is a Mifare card for all vehicles. When a vehicle departs from the premise, driver needs to carry the vehicle’s Mifare card to the UFR Reader. The UFR Reader then captures the time and the serial number of the card. If the card is not available in the database, then Reader will display a red light with a long beep. If the card is available in the database, then the reader will accept the card and send the time to the database. There are manipulations with this captured time such as generating OT time of the driver. In addition, the administrator can check the vehicle location. He can request for the location of a vehicle from the database, as there are GPS trackers inside the vehicles. Agile process was used to develop this project, which has three main developmental stages; time capture through UFR device, GPS tracking development, and web site development for Admin, staff, and customers. Test plan was implemented and the development was tested. User manuals are presented in Appendix J and K of this thesis and the thesis includes most of the aimed targets. The evaluation was conducted by using 15 employees in SLPA. Evaluation results revealed that they were satisfied with the system’s ability to keep a track to maintain their vehicles. In addition, this project will help them to reduce cost and save time.