So what do you do when you've got loads and loads of vehicles to plan deliveries
and pickups and you're trying to do it on a white board, it's a nightmare.
What do you reckon Joost? What is the way around it. it's a
Route optimization tool what's one of those. Where do you get one and
what does it do for you? That's the topic for this week.
okay Joost, so you work with a company called PTV and you have a tool that
helps people actually schedule their routes. Yeah Rob, that's correct
we have tool call to PTV Route optimizer and it's tool really designs
for companies that have a larger fleet although works or smaller feeds as well
but typically you know you have fifteen or twenty more vehicles in multi
drops it can become quite a challenge. So there's a lot of these different tools
over the last twenty or thirty years. I have to say there's a motive for talking
to Joost today because we actually use the PTV to router optimize in our
consulting work. So we're doing a lot of this you know sort of fleet size and mix
study and so on for our consultant for a consulting clients. So I think it's a
really neat tool but one of the reasons that we're talking to Joost today,
we actually want to see a tool like this in action. So tell us where we are today Joost
well we are at ANC delivers and they're a big logistic service provider
they do a lot of the home deliveries for the big retailers in Australia and
they've implemented route optimizer to assist their schedulers okay growing
tasks really run a fleet of 150 vehicles on route optimizer okay among the six
dispatches yeah, So you reckon we can go and have a chat to them and in fact the
people behind us I think are actually doing the routing maybe we're gonna have
a talk to them as well so we'll get a real hands-on feel for how these tools
are used and the sort of benefits that people can get from them. yeah and and
how that works operationally because that's it's a big difference between
using a tool strategically yes there's a nice little dig they're using it
strategically as a consultant or hands-on operationally no that's very
true so let's get around and talk to some of the people at ANC.
Now let me introduce Lucy who's the IT manager at ANC. Lucy, Joost was telling us
about how you've implemented the route scheduling software love to hear about
you know some of the benefits and maybe you can tell us about the changes what
was it like before the software tool and after. Before a lot more people doing the
same work and then after we've implemented it we've reduced a couple of
shifts and but a lot more work has come through so to consistently route the
work and get more more work out to the drivers with less staff
it's excellent. So that the productivity is increased of the drivers and of the
people planning and awesome what was the the implementation of all of that like
was that quite tricky from going a manual process to automotive? No No it
wasn't too tricky understanding what the system can and can't do is always just a
learning curve and once it was set up and the guys are actually using it to
route and it's pretty simple it sound great messages yeah it could be good
visuals on it too. So it's obviously helped you enormously within the
business have you noticed any sort of feedback from customers the customers
not so much from me but I have heard there's less issues being raised so
we've got more volume of work and routing through it there's less issues
that arise that are getting right we've have actually been able to easily
implement a reduction or delivery window for the customer after routing.
that's good. That's interesting because one of the things or I guess one
of the levers in terms of scheduling vehicles is the delivery time windows
and always if you're trying to get you know more productive work done with your
transport fleets the best thing to do is to try and ease out those delivery time
windows so if you've got customers to say look we need to deliver between nine
and ten if you can get them to say look anytime between nine and eleven that
gives you a lot more flexibility to actually do your scheduling and make it
all more efficient. So Lucy, what you're saying is
it's become so efficient you can actually tighten those windows so you
can be a lot more specific for the customers yeah yep and just tell them
the night before I've told you all day beforehand and yeah the night before it
actually this small window and they appreciate that a lot right so what's
the next step thanks more time more customers more customers more more more
States and rolling it out further yeah right. So the system is
actually helped you just take on a lot more volume like a good system because
it's nice consistency with stuff. yeah do you recommend
there's a lot of people using the system downstairs your if you go down to them
and see what the users think of it sure let's go downstairs.
okay so what's going
on here Lucy. Okay, well he's is actually allocating some work and
keeping track of the driver throughout the day and talk to the drivers when they've come up
with some issues - oh that's for board on the wall. That for our call centers with an incoming call
queues and we also have this board over here which shows us just a quick
Now let's get down to the action end and see how this system actually works we've
got Marco with us. Buenos Dias Marco. Buenos Dias.
Shall we do this in English or Spanish. Wow let's keep it in English
for the viewers. So you're actually helping people train how to use this
system so it goes is it what do you call it route optimiser. Route Optimiser
PTV yes right. So tell us what's on these you've got three screens tell us what's
on here so basically on this LED screen I don't know but if you can see it. But this is the access
database this is like the filter before the jobs go across into PTV yeah so it's
basically just just a tool in order to get the data cleaner. yeah so we can see
the jobs here in the map and we can have a street level so it's not only the
suburb so we can go really into the street which is what we want and this we
see the route actually building up yeah the routefor example this one starts in
Blacktown and you just go all the way to the inner west finishing in have a field
- field and then it on the center screen we've actually got sort of the listing
of the jobs yeah yeah so we have we have the the driver for example this driver
driver number five four three and we have here the job numbers so with this
client we have two different services which is HDD and HDS which mean one of
them is deluxe delivery which means the driver we have to go in
install it tested and I yeah so does the system take account of that so you know
where it's an install the system knows to leave yeah so in the database we set
up some a small rules based on the service code so if it's a if it's a drop
it will we will say HDS which will give Less amount of time for example we can
see that this driver this is one of the fastest drivers that we have in the
fleet so this guy for example for a drop-off which is an HTS you will take
about six minutes and for an HDD who will take about 11
minutes to get the appliance out of the car out of the truck that's getting into
the customers yeah that is really we're talking washing machines and things like
this washing machines fridges yes all right
yeah we get him to install my next one that's pretty quick
we can arrange it yeah so tell me what was the life like try out of having a
system like that how would you do something like this manually well we
would have basically a map and full of dots and we would say well this guy
we're guesstimating that you can do this amount of deliveries and in this amount
of time so it was it was a lot of guesstimating okay they but with this tool
and based on the historical data that we have we can see at what time the driver
is getting into the address what time is completing the job and we just grabbed
big amounts of data and we just go through it and we calculate the time
that they take okay so let me simplistically try to play back what
we're doing here so you you get all of your orders into
the system which was on that screen but it yep yeah and then we we dump them
into PTV how many orders would you be putting in here in a day at the moment this
is just only one claim that would choose sources of training yeah for today was
there were a hundred and thirty-five jobs yeah really good so the guy so
scheduling out here I mean this is the triangle but how many drops with a
they should be scheduling every day. Its around throughout the whole day around
500-600 Wow you don't want to do that manually. So this is this
is the first thing how we how we see the Orders and these are what pickups and
deliveries yeah yeah we did with this a specific client we've got a different
thing which is we call it transport jobs in PTV which is pickup from one store
for example this one is a pickup from Castle Hill and it goes to bombing Hills
so this implies we have our central warehouse and then the same driver that
delivers this job we'll have to go to castle hill first
pick up the rest of the order and take another customer and so
this is happening daily yeah on a daily basis yeah this system allows you to you
know if the customer says I don't want that delivery now you can actually go in
dynamically and change it yeah yeah we just we will have to identify which
customers will like this service and we can change for example this order we can
just go into a specific order and assign a specific time so if someone came along
to you and say would you like to use a tool like this for all the scheduling or
to do dots on a map. I would prefer 100 times this one is just it makes it it makes it quicker
it makes it better for our COR perspective and chain of responsibility
really good point ah this is this is great because it just makes you it gives
you a certainty that you're not gonna run a driver for more than 12 hours
manage the hours you're gonna give them breaks throughout the day and we can see
here for example the break time in every run so if the run goes over ten hours it
has to assign an hour break thanks for yeah showing us around the
system Marco muchas gracias. De nada
so I thought before we leave ANC. we ought to talk to the boss James thank
you very much about letting us have a look around.
what an amazing business you're doing all kinds of delivery operations aren't
you we are indeed yeah we do a lot of
deliveries per month and what sort of clients are you looking after a lot of
retail clients IKEA, Bunnings. JB hi-fi the good guys those sort of people and
we were downstairs talking to Marco and he was explaining how a lot of its home
delivery and installs and all yes they're very complex when you walk into
a home it was telling me help one guy can install a washing machine or
something in 11 minutes that's amazing takes me three days yeah so I guess look
we've been having a look at route scheduling systems and the benefits that they give
to businesses maybe just to finish off with yourself what was life like before
having a scheduling tool like this versus life after so there's two really
big benefits the first one is really just consistency so now we're getting
consistency in terms of the allocation and the runs and being performed so you
get a bit of customer experience but also to then there's great benefits for
the contractors the drivers yeah so less mileage less fuel consumption shorter
hours so fatigue is less of a problem safety and then from a cost perspective
their costs perspective they're making more money because they're not burning
as much fuel so great win-win all around yeah I mean I think to be honest
anyone who's trying to manage a fleet of more than sort of 20-25 vehicles without
a system like this it would be a struggle upon imagine you running 150 or
me 800 I got 800 nationally yeah through the system I think it's about
150 I think yeah yeah so that's amazing so I just want to thank you again we'll
put a link below to ANC that people know who me visiting today your
team have been great and get the enthusiasm and using the system I mean
they're a good thank you very much
So there we go a quick look at route scheduling software and thank you again to
ANC for hosting us and showing us around the business and how they use the
software Thank You Joost Bekker of course from PTV who provide the system's
great system I have to say that because we use it for our consulting work now
you remember how this works if you enjoyed the video do subscribe make sure
you get our weekly videos that came out on a Wednesday if you have any comments
do comment below and I'd love to help you answer questions that you have about
fleet management and let's put a couple of links below as well so we'll put a
link to PTV and a link down to ANC based here in Sydney who've been our
host today so thank you for watching look forward to talking to you again
next week and if you got any questions comment below
you