"Easy Rider" provides LE computer-assistance to the vehicle transport industry. This is where drivers are transported by van to their vehicles at a sending location; usually the same van then recovers them at their destination, and repeats this operation across the same or different locations. Connected with a car rental agency, these locations may all be at a single airport, or at different airports: compensation may be by the hour or by the trip (respectively). At the airport, daily operation may seasonally require movement of more than a thousand "dirty" cars from rental check-in, thru "housekeeping", clean to customer pickup (and all intervening holding areas) using a total of about 50 drivers. Control of this movement is traditionally given to Dispatch, whose only certain knowledge is the state of vehicular presence at "housekeeping".

Computer-assistance, beginning in hire process management, is provided by the following:

· dPM: Personnel/TK/Payroll module

· dSM: (two-tier) Personnel Scheduling module

· dOM: Daily Operations module

dPM: The Personnel/TC Management system tracks employees thru various stages of hiring, encardinations, and possibly separation. An employee's most frequently recorded interaction with the system is thru timekeeping. These weekly VB-generated tables are presented for macro-enhanced adjustment as Excel worksheets, preserved then in their entirety as a on-line archive to the VB system. MS Word prepares posting labels for adjusted timecards (if used) in the current period, and ID labels (that reflect currently payable employees) for the next period. Excel passes one subset of the timekeeping worksheet to Billing and another to Cost Analysis.

dSM: Scheduling allows drivers regular base assignment to any number of vans (or other locations or tasks) throughout the day, 7 days a week. Daily assignments may be modified (with no effect on base) in advance (to provide current starting crew sheets) and on-line throughout the day. A record of population adjustments (1), as well as a "supplemental" vehicular movement log (2), for each van is available (whether generated manually or on-line) for timecard and billing reconcilation.

dOP: Daily Operations supports batch or real-time analysis of vehicular movements. Batch analysis enlists the batch input of "low-level" data (3) from hand-held scanners, gathered by security personnel at various "permanent" checkpoints. Real time operation monitors two channels of radio communication: one conveys Dispatch's traditional PC "high level" instructions to the vans (4), and a second lets each van tell QC when they arrives at a new location (5). dOP data entry allows (4) to be captured in three mouse clicks, and (5) in two. All activity is timestamped, and its duration noted. The volume of vehicles at each location is continuously monitored and the entire day, being recorded, may be published and/or played back.

Real-time in "analysis" mode essentially monitors Dispatch's distribution of the vans, and operates as a Quality Control function. Real-time, as available in "control" mode, is where he who has Easy Rider is also the Dispatcher, and is therefore functioning as Production Control. Logistically, an extra van may need to be dedicated to carrying the computer (laptop) and its personnel to where com signal strength is greatest. But we also have the possibilty (in the van) that with "PC Anywhere", a modem, and a cellular phone we may, in free one-minute bursts, put that screen on any (similarily equiped) monitor anywhere.

Able administrators have now tools and data by which they may easily outperform the "plantation" management and methods that currently dominate the transportation of rental vehicles.

As you may notice from the documentation, ER in its ordinary operation uses Access, Excel, and Word. Therefore, MS Office 97 (the Professional edition) must be available at the host site. Also, ER is presently available only in beta testing. In order to avoid the installation overhead in packaging & deploying frequent updates, beta users are required to maintain support on their host systems adequate to the operation of VB executable applications. A VB6 IDE (Professional or Enterprise) must be installed, either as the stand-alone MS product, or as part of MS Visual Studio.

decide additional application titles: base needs to be something about "crews". Then

· 1: the TRANSPORTER edition should be "easy rider"; we need then

· 2: the VIDEO PRODUCTION needs to be ..., and

· 3: the PUBLIC SERVICE version is ... .