According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), over half a million holders of U.S commercial driver's licenses also qualify for full federal disability payments due to health issues. Some suffer from ailments ranging from vision and hearing impairments to seizure disorders. The situation underscores recent calls on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to bolster regulations governing the operation of commercial vehicles.

The FMCSA's primary mission is to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses.  In carrying out this mandate, the FMCSA amongst other things, develops and enforces "data-driven&" regulations that balance motor carrier safety with industry efficiency.

Intelex offers a Department of Transportation (DOT) compliance module that was developed to enable operators of commercial vehicles to easily abide by FMCSA regulations.  The module stores driver information, tracks driver qualifications, generates real-time status reports, and sends automated escalating email reminders, and more.

New reports and scorecards for the Intelex Audits Management Module are available to be downloaded for free from the Intelex-Exchange.

Once you've used the reports post a comment to let us know how they've made your job easier. Or post a comment with suggestions of reports or scorecards that you'd like to see built.

REPORTS
Audits Scheduled in Next 90 days
Lists all the audits that are scheduled for next 90 days.

Completed Audit Results
This report lists all the audits that have been completed in the last 3 months.

Upcoming Audits by Type
Grouped report listing all the audits upcoming for the current year.

Audits by Person Responsible
This report displays a list of Audits that are scheduled for the current year and grouped by Person Responsible.

Follow-Up Actions by Audits
Grouped report showing the Follow-Up Actions that are required after conducting the audits.

Scheduled Audits This Year by Month
Grouped report showing scheduled audits for the present year.

Upcoming Audits by Location
Groped report showing the upcoming audits grouped by location for the current year.

Audits Causing Standard Non-Conformances
Grouped report showing audits resulting in Standard Non-conformances.

Audit Scheduled This year by Type
Matrix report showing the number of audits scheduled this year by Audit Type.

Audits Completed This year by Type
Matrix report showing the number of completed Audits in current year by Audit Type.

Audits Scheduled vs Completed by Month and by Audit Types
Audits as well as Completed Audits for the current year by Audit Type.

SCORECARD
Number of Audits vs. Number of Follow-Up Actions
Graphical representation of the number of audits for the given year vs. number of follow-ups happening during the same year, grouped on a monthly basis.

10. Conservation of natural resources by minimization of paper usage.

9. Reduction of operational costs. Filing cabinets take up precious floor space which can be costly. Also, retrieving and processing paper-based documents is time intensive.

8. Increased productivity.

7. Ensure compliance with laws and regulations which require companies to implement document tracking procedures.

6. Backup of critical files.

5. Security. Prevent unauthorized alteration or destruction of data.

4. Accountability.  Provide audit trails as well as user logs and record activity.

3. Access control.  Control and designate access levels to an organization’s documents.

2. Process consistency. Enforce strict adherence to filing, naming conventions, and workflow processes.

1. Universal accessibility. A web-based document management system enables employees to retrieve documents wherever they are.

It's official, Intelex 5 is almost here! Intelex is excited to announce that our ASP clients will receive the release of Intelex 5 on Sunday August 17th with enterprise clients to follow shortly after.

With over 160 new features, enhancements and improvements, Intelex's Version 5 is a breakthrough in EQH'S and business performance management.

SNEAK PEEK OF NEW FEATURES

Stay tuned for more updates about the release of Intelex 5.

According to OSHA, July is the month with the highest occurrence of falls in the United States. This is probably due to the increase in construction activity during the summer months.

Brooks Schuelke of InjuryBoard.com discusses fall-related injuries in a recent post.  He covers various causes and highlights best practices to reduce incidences.

As of July 8, close to a thousand cases of salmonella poisoning have been reported in the United States and more than 130 people hospitalized throughout the country.  Safety officials are uncertain as to the cause of the outbreak. The initial focus was on tomatoes but jalapeno peppers, cilantro, and even some brands of salsa have also been cited as potential culprits.

The outbreak has brought attention to the role of the Food and Drug Administration in monitoring the nation's food supply. The FDA Commissioner is being called upon to use his emergency powers to put in place a detailed tracking system to follow produce from the farm to the dinner table. Meanwhile, the FDA's safety chief has urged corporate responsibility while lamenting that safety reports are still created using pen and paper.

The time has come for the agricultural sector to adopt widespread software tracking protocols in order to improve traceability. Some food producers already track their products. Most food producers place stickers on their fruits and vegetables. It might just be a question of adding additional information on the stickers to pinpoint where the produce originated and how it got to its ultimate destination. Every activity at every point in the supply chain needs to be captured electronically and stored in databases. This would make it a lot easier to create a clearer picture when safety issues arise.

An ideal situation would be similar to that of tracking parcels sent by couriers such as DHL or FedEx.  You enter a tracking number on a website and can immediately see the history of a product from its origin to its final destination.  This information should be made available not just to businesses and investigators but to the consumer as well.

Attention Intelex document control users, five new document control reports are available to be downloaded for free from Intelex-Exchange.com. Remember that all of these reports can be added to your dashboard to give you instant, real-time document control data. Enjoy!

Ready for Release List
Lists all the documents that are finished being edited or being approved and are ready to be released.

Rejected Document List
Lists the documents that have been rejected for the current year.

Change Request Overdue This year
Lists the documents whose change requests are overdue for the current year.

Rejected Change Request
Lists the documents whose change requests have been rejected and the reason for the rejection.

Pending Actions
Lists documents with pending actions, grouped by the status of the document for the current year.

The Lahore Development Authority (Pakistan) has announced that they will be implementing quality control laboratories to assess the quality of road materials and construction procedures being used across their developments.  To kick off this new quality management initiative, the LDA "has issued orders to all contractors enlisted with LDA … [the contractors] have also been instructed to ensure submission of road materials to such 'Quality Control Laboratories' so that material could be screened in accordance with international standards" (Nation.com 2008).

I've blogged about the value of a quality management system before but I thought this story exemplified the point that quality control really can be applied to any industry, product, and service.

To read the complete story about LDA's quality control program visit www.Nation.com.

The past several months at Intelex have been nothing short of exciting.  As our client base continues to grow, milestones are quickly being reached.  The month of June saw Intelex reach its 300^th client!

As a result of this positive growth, our staff at Intelex has also been expanding to help meet the positive trends we're ecstatically experiencing.  Recent additions to our Marketing, Development, and Client Services teams are helping put Intelex in great position to meet (and hopefully surpass) every single one of our clients' needs.

To help add to this excitement, Client Relations would like to take the opportunity to invite our Intelex users to actively participate on our blog!  Along with providing useful and informative information to our clients about our industry, we feel that the blog is a great medium for clients to tell us about their particular successes using Intelex.  You can simply respond to a particular blog posting having caught your interest or attention, or you can email Client Relations at client.relations@intelex.com with specific details of what you wish to convey.  We would be more than happy to submit a post on your behalf and would be thrilled if you took an interest in helping us grow Intelex's online community!

At the end of the day, the Intelex blog is not only for our users, but about our users.  So whether you were client # 1 or client # 300, we would love to hear from you!

Client Relations
Intelex Technologies