SMART Planning
When considering automation, manpower, and infrastructure issues, ECF designers must ask the appropriate questions in order to properly assess the impacts of their decisions. Blindly focusing on one near-term issue without considering ramifications will result in unmet priorities and wasted resources. The table below provides a list of questions ECF designers need to consider.
| Security |
What AT measures are required?
How do these requirements impact traffic (processing) and will that impact necessitate additional manpower or lanes?
Can automation enhance security?
Is the system providing positive access control? |
| Manpower |
Is manpower utilized efficiently?
Would additional lanes allow for more efficient processing thus reducing manpower demands?
Will automation help reduce manpower costs? |
| Automation |
Will automation provide a manpower cost savings?
Will automation provide a security benefit?
Will automation be able to achieve comparable processing rates to manual processing?
Is there the proper infrastructure (lanes) to support automation initiatives?
Are there policy decisions that need to be implemented to support efficient automation? |
| Roads & Lanes |
Are there sufficient lanes to accommodate manual processing?
If additional lanes were constructed, could manpower be reduced?
Are there sufficient lanes to accommodate automation? |
| Traffic & Safety |
How do security decisions impact processing (traffic)?
How do manpower decisions impact processing (traffic)?
How do automation decisions impact processing (traffic)? |
All of these issues are inter-related. The SMART approach is to consider the ramifications of decisions. SDDCTEA has developed the ACP/ECF SMART Decision Evaluator web-application to assist ECF Designers with answering the questions in the table above.
