Optrak
Food Services
With additional functionality and customised parameters to meet the distinct distribution requirements, we understand your industry and the pressures you face in it.
INDUSTRY REQUIREMENTS
Complex Time-Windows
Time windows in the industry are typically concentrated in the morning to ensure that delivery doesn’t impact daily operations. When time windows are tight, it is often the case that obeying them strictly will lead to extra vehicles being employed at considerable additional cost.
Urban Deliveries
Food and Drink distribution is heavily impacted by congestion and limited access to sites/delivery points due to the locations of customers in highly populated areas.
Multi-Temperature Vehicles
For food deliveries many vehicles have compartments for different temperatures. Some of these are fixed size, others have movable bulkheads separating temperature zones. With movable bulkheads, the positioning is not necessarily completely flexible.
Container-Based Loading
Pallets, dollies or roll-cages can all be employed by distributors where the products must be grouped by customer. The different foot-print of pallets and roll-cages makes loading them onto the vehicle complex.
Weekly Peaks and Troughs
Customers typically stock up for, or after the weekend instead of regularly. Smaller and more remote customers can exist where next day/any day service is uneconomic or altogether non-viable.
OPTRAK SOLUTIONS
Soft Time-Windows
Optrak4’s soft time window feature allows the user to permit a small amount of earliness or lateness in return for an internal weighting. Allowing a slightly late delivery could be outside the customer service agreement, but it could save a whole truck day and therefore be considered worthwhile, either in operational planning or when renegotiating SLAs.
Clients have complete control over which customers have soft and which the standard hard time windows – and for the soft time windows, the extent and the cost of using them. The optimization balances this against truck and other distribution costs.
Bespoke Food and Drink Design
Optrak4 also has a specific multi-temperature loading model which creates loading patterns that work for the customer based on the specified vehicle layout and temperature set-up and can be given as diagrams to the loading staff.
Improving Predefined Routes
Optrak4 can work with pre-defined routes or route areas – building routes and schedules that match the route criteria but also allowing the optimiser to add extra orders where capacity allows or the planner to adjust routes that are over-full.
Urban Deliveries
Optrak4’s travel-time calculations take into account rush-hour speeds including the effects of “tidal flow” into cities in the morning and out in the afternoon.
The greater accuracy of historical road speeds has been shown to enable a 4% improvement in routing efficiency.
Customer access restrictions can be managed within the Optrak4 solution at the customer site level, ensuring that the right vehicle is deployed to attend.
Vehicle Loading
Optrak4 has unique capabilities to deal with the complex loading requirements of the industry. In addition to multi-temperature compartments, Optrak4 takes into account how orders are grouped onto pallets or roll-cages – for example dedicating roll-cages to specific customers for ease of off-loading.
Loading rules are translated into a loading plan which can be printed off and given to drivers or pickers. This ensures that the loaded products are all accessible when required as the driver follows the delivery sequence.
INDUSTRIES
TESTIMONIALS
Reynolds
“The punctuality and efficiency of our deliveries demonstrates our commitment to quality and customer service excellence. At Reynolds, we have always used proven technology to support our business. Central to this has been the long term partnership with Optrak4, to integrate its leading vehicle routing solution into our overall supply chain.”
Optrak
2018-06-12T23:26:56+01:00
Joe Reynolds, Managing Director at Reynolds
https://optrak.com/testimonials/reynolds-content-page/
Fuchs UK
“Optrak gives us more delivery flexibility and is a great system to use. It has actually revitalised our planning operation at Fuchs. The investment in a world class vehicle routing system demonstrates our commitment in ensuring that we deliver the best possible service to our customers whilst keeping costs down. I firmly believe no other routing package can deliver the same benefits as Optrak.”
Optrak
2018-06-13T11:19:40+01:00
Darren Bourne, Distribution Manager at Fuchs UK
https://optrak.com/testimonials/fuchs-uk-optrak4-page/
Kuehne and Nagel
“Optrak4 offered a more cost effective and personalised system that catered for our particular requirements and the decision to use an advanced routing and scheduling system has been fully justified by the benefits that Kuehne + Nagel has achieved. We have greatly improved the time we spend on planning and Optrak generates very efficient transport runs for a very complex daily transport operation.
Furthermore, thanks to Optrak4, we can meet the requirement to deliver next day to any location throughout the UK. We generally achieve 97-98% of this target on a daily basis. Optrak4 can plan effectively for consignments of any shape and size as long as we have the right information such as vehicle types, driver working times and product details for example.”
Optrak
2018-06-21T16:11:03+01:00
Chris Donaghue, Senior Transport Supervisor at Kuehne + Nagel
https://optrak.com/testimonials/kuehne-and-nagel/
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Optrak
RELATED AREAS
DAILY PLANNING
Find out how Optrak4 can improve your daily planning and save up to 15% of your direct transport costs.
KEY BENEFITS
An award winning Vehicle Routing and Scheduling system offering an end-to-end solution – saving you money, reducing your planning time and improving customer service.
OPTRAK5
Optrak5 is our flagship vehicle routing product – providing our customers with a comprehensive platform for route optimisation, vehicle scheduling and load planning throughout their distribution process.