Majority of the fleet operators are putting their cost-cutting efforts in the wrong areas. They bargain on fuel cards, encourage drivers to drive at a reasonable pace, argue over leasing or buying. All reasonable moves. However, the greater saving, the saving that multiplies day by day in all the vehicles of the fleet, lies in the way of running that is arranged in advance of the departure of any one driver out of the yard. Poor sequencing is expensive. The majority of the operations are doing it, and most of them have not computed what it is actually costing them since the waste is so thinly spread over so many shifts that it does not seem dramatic on any one particular day. Discover how route optimization software for Australian businesses can transform your daily logistics into a smoother, more profitable journey.
The route optimisation software takes care of that issue at its origin. It uses a stop list which a dispatcher could spend forty minutes sorting and generates a sequenced run in seconds – a run which takes into consideration traffic windows, delivery time limits, vehicle load limits, and driver hours at the same time. It is not only faster planning. It is more structurally better planning. Finishes are closer to on time. The number of drops covered by drivers reduces. The unnecessary kilometres just cease to be registered in the fuel receipts.
The savings is spread across several line items. The most visible one is fuel. However, overtime declines as the spread of runs beyond the end of the shift. Failure to deliver is reduced when the ETA turns to be realistic other than being an optimistic estimation. Maintenance of vehicles decreases marginally as the number of kilometres travelled decreases. None of these headlines on their own but when combined on a fleet basis in a year, it is likely to be a bigger number than most operators think it to be until they first start calculating it correctly.
The better platforms are the ones that will have a dynamic adjustment capability which makes them worth the premium. Delivery days in the real world do not act like spread sheets. One of the customers cancel at 9am. One day a road blockage is seen in the middle of the day. A driver comes off the first stop forty minutes late. Software capable of taking such changes, reallocating the affected stops, and integrating the rest of the run, without the dispatcher having to reassemble everything by hand, is priceless in terms of operational value. The other option, ringing drivers, using guesses on new sequences, hoping everything will work out is time-consuming and often customer relationships as well.
Assessment must be realistic and not idealistic. A trial period that is conducted against your easiest week only informs you of very little usefulness. Test the platform with the most challenging operational scenario – full volume, challenging time constraints, no less than one unforeseen variable in the middle of the day. Should it cope with that without collapsing, it will have its place. Software, which can only work perfectly in theory, is not addressing your real problem. It is simply doing well in the pilot.
