Optrak Distribution Software has announced that Filshill, the Scottish convenience wholesale distributor, has gone live with the Optrak vehicle routing system. The introduction of specialist routing software has made an immediate impact with Filshill reducing the number of vehicles required to meet delivery commitments whilst achieving greater resource utilisation.
Robin Spalding, Transport Manager at Filshill said, "Optrak creates very accurate routes and loading plans. The support that we have received from Optrak has been fantastic and it has helped us realise benefits from day one. We are aiming to take our first vehicle off the road shortly which will give us an immediate annual saving of around 50,000 per year. We are targeting a further fleet reduction in 2011 and along with additional savings from minimised fleet mileage and improved vehicle utilisation, I am confident that we will achieve a very rapid ROI."
Optrak has been interfaced with Filshill's Sanderson Swords system. Each day, customer, order and product details are downloaded from Swords into Optrak. At 9am the transport planner uses Optrak to optimise all orders for Filshill's two outbases and creates a set of efficient trips that meet all customer and delivery criteria.
Filshill download a second set of orders for its main fleet around at 11am and the planner quickly creates another 20 trips using Optrak to optimise the vehicle movements. All results are uploaded back into Swords and pick lists for the warehouse are generated. Thanks to Optrak the total time spent planning has been reduced to an hour.
Filshill use a 'vehicle loader' that has been customised by Optrak to precisely control what orders are allocated to a vehicle based on its capacity and the need to load a mix of roll cages and pallets. This ensures Filshill can maximise vehicle utilisation and Optrak's detailed loading charts make it easier for warehouse staff to see how vehicles should be loaded.
Spalding explained, "We have already seen the more efficient routes generated by Optrak help us reduce the number of vehicles that we need to fulfil daily deliveries. On some days, we are finding that we need two to three vehicles less to do the same amount of work that we did previously as we are planning more efficiently and loading vehicles more accurately."
Simon Hannah, Managing Director at Filshill added, "We have invested in ensuring that Filshill can continue to deliver high levels of customer service whilst minimising operational costs, Optrak's vehicle routing software has helped us achieve this goal. Optrak have worked closely with our Transport team, IT department, and of course Sanderson, to implement industry best practice for route planning. This is a central part of our long term commitment to supply chain and logistics excellence."
Tim Pigden Managing Director of Optrak stated, "Many foodservice companies are missing out on greater supply chain efficiency by using manual route planning. Specialist vehicle routing software is proven to help companies make significant transport savings and with rapid ROI it can make a real difference to bottom line profitability."
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