30+ years ago the Concrete Batch Control industry came together and developed a standard ticket data transfer format so producers could interface different batch controls to a dispatch system.  At the time Command/Data was the largest dispatch system and was based on the AS400 platform.  Most controllers at the time were just starting out on MS-DOS and QNIX/UNIX operating systems.

Thus the “TKT.EXP” collection file was created and is still apart of most Batch Controllers today.  As per the manual, plant data collection is separated into two data points;

1. (Upper Ticket) Ready-mix Ticket Sold to and Product information.
2. (Lower Ticket) Ready-mix Batch Plant Production Data. Actual Batch Weights and Times.

Combined, these two collection files capture over 300 data fields per load of concrete.  Each time a load of concrete is batched, the ticket data is appended to the file and it keeps growing each batch.  The file size grows quickly and can gradually slow down the plant production, so some operators will turn off this collection point; most do not know of the file and because Hard Drives have increased in storage capacity, the files grow in the back ground of the controller software.

As a Concrete Plant Manufacture, DHE Inc. mines the batch data and generates production graphs.  Overall we are looking for Concrete Plant consistency and comparison to the original plant theoretical production design.  Looking for different levels of patterns.

In addition the data also supports Quality Control, Sales / Marketing, Preventive maintenance, Yards Per Hour Vs Labor Costs, Operational inefficiency, etc.

Over the years we have added blogs to our web site that helps the producer increase their plant efficiency.  We also just released a FREE app for recommended and logging plant maintenance.  The app collects the field data and then automatically updates plant maintenance and management.