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Optrak Vehicle Routing and Scheduling for Fuel Oil Distribution
Fuel Oil is a set of modules specifically designed to meet the needs of fuel oil distribution including products such as heating oil, agricultural and commercial diesel.
All the facilities of Optrak for Operational Load Planning are available.
Optrak supports multi-compartment bulk loading. Optrak can deal with different compartment types and different pumping rules. For example:
- Fully metered
- Two different customers can have product delivered from the same compartment.
- Unmetered, part-full
- Only one customer order per compartment. The compartment does not need to be full because it is accurately measured at point of origin.
- Unmetered, full compartment only
- Only one customer order per compartment. The compartment must be full and is likely to be checked prior to unloading.
Product-product compatibility regulations are also observed – for example preventing petrol being delivered on the same vehicles as home heating oils.
Optrak produces a bulk loading diagram that displays which fuel product is to be loaded into which compartment.
Bulk loading diagram; Each product type is assigned a different colour
Uncertain delivery quantities
A common problem in the domestic fuel sector is that actual delivery quantities are unknown. Top-up orders will always be an estimate, but a typical call-in order can also be approximate – domestic customers often place orders without working out exactly how much they have in the tank and require to fill it.
In these circumstances, your driver may have product left over towards the end of the day, or be running short. Optrak Realisation allows you to monitor the amount of product left on the vehicle at any time. It will automatically detect if you are under-delivering or running low. It will enable the planner to add additional orders from the unplanned order pool, or instruct the driver to skip a low-priority order to ensure a high priority order later in the trip can still be fulfilled.
Multi-day delivery horizon
As a fuel distributor, at any time, you will probably have a mixture of call-in orders and top-up account orders, where you have to ensure the customer does not run out, based on forecasting. Some of the orders will be urgent and some can be delivered any time over the next few days. Optrak allows you to prioritise the urgent orders within the optimization. Also on the map view, orders can be displayed according to urgency. This is a great help when reviewing the Optrak routes and making route adjustments.
Finding customers
Rural addresses are often hard to find. By using the Codepoint post code addressing, Optrak gives a good initial location for the driver – particularly if he is equipped with an integrated SatNav. Using Optrak Realisation, the on-board GPS device can record the customer’s exact position, ensuring that subsequent deliveries to the customer can be made even more easily – as an integrated SatNav will take the coordinates directly from the previous visit.
Vehicle Access Restrictions
Rural delivery sites often have access restrictions. 4-wheeler vehicles may be needed for some customers. Optrak highlights those customers on the map and allows you to ensure that the 4-wheeler vehicles are used to make those deliveries.
"Right from the start Optrak demonstrated a very clear understanding of the issues and challenges that we face"
Steven Frazer
Manager Director, Lisburn Fuels