Assigning tow truck companies to service areas can be a complicated process, especially when there are more than 5,000 towers needed for nationwide coverage. The Amoco Motor Club, along with Ernst and Young Management Consulting and Esri, developed a PC-based application to assist field managers with this process. The Service Area Gridding Environment (SAGE) application allows the field manager to add/maintain service provider data, use ArcView to interactively select ZIP Codes to assign service areas, and analyze the dispatch and financial performance of service providers. ArcView also displays ZIP Codes without service providers and identifies ZIP Codes without certain service types (locksmith, flatbed, etc.).The application can also dial up the Amoco server to upload changes to the service provider network and download daily dispatch data. The application was written using PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, Avenue, and Crosstalk.The purpose of the paper is to highlight the application and its functions as well as to review the technical challenges encountered during the development and integration of the different software products.
Assigning tow truck companies to service areas can be complicated process, especially when there are more than 5,000 towers needed for nationwide coverage. The Amoco Motor Club along with Ernst and Young Management Consulting and Esri developed a PC based application to assist field managers with this process. The Service Area Gridding Environment (SAGE) application allows the field manager to add/maintain service provider data, use ArcView to interactively select ZIP Codes to assign service areas, and analyze the dispatch and financial performance of service providers. ArcView also displays ZIP Codes without service providers, and identifies ZIP Codes without certain service types (locksmith, flatbed, etc.).The application can also dial up the Amoco server and upload changes to the service provider network, and download daily dispatch data. The application was written using PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, Avenue, and Crosstalk. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the application and its functions as well as to review the technical challenges encountered during the development and integration of the different software products.