Optrak
Freight and Parcels
Designed to support the challenges of last-mile delivery and ‘collection for onward delivery’ that characterise both 3PL and freight forwarding industries, Optrak4 supports the variable and complex issues distributors handle on a day-to-day basis.
INDUSTRY REQUIREMENTS
Mixed Deliveries and Collections
Combining both delivery and collections on the same vehicles presents loading challenges. For route efficiency, collections are usually mixed with deliveries, but the dynamic space on the vehicle and placement of goods has to be taken into account, particularly if rear access via tail lift is required.
Estimating Times
Although delivery and collection points tend to be from industrial locations rather than city centres, rush hour traffic causes problems when estimating arrival times at customer locations, even as the business must work to guaranteed delivery and collection times.
Same Day Collections
Orders for 3PL and freight forwarders come in continuously, creating an ongoing requirement to add and balance orders on trips, as they come in, to minimise partial loads and both improve customer service and reduce cost to the business.
Subcontracting
Orders from certain locations occur at such a low frequency it may be cost-ineffective to collect/deliver with your own vehicles, but where and how should the line be drawn between own fleet and subcontractor?
Line-haul Trailer Loading
Modelling loading requirements and capacity is complicated by the nature of goods in both 3PL and Freight Forwarding work, which can often be ‘ugly’ – uncommon in shape or size. Finding an answer to mapping these goods alongside typical palletised products can mean the difference between a profitable and unprofitable load.
OPTRAK SOLUTIONS
Mixed Collection and Deliveries with Smart 3D Loading
Optrak4 can handle delivery and collections on the same route – driving efficiency through a mapping of the dynamic space on the vehicle with integrated loading and customisation to reflect individual vehicle requirements.
Furthermore Optrak4 loading modules are fully integrated into the vehicle routing process – linking planned trips to load layout to ensure goods are packed both space efficiently and accessibly for each stop.
Delivery Planning
Time estimation consists of two parts – driving time and time at the customer. Optrak4 uses historical road speeds to predict journey times between sites. A study showed that the improved accuracy from this alone, resulted in a 4% improvement in routing efficiency.
To improve accuracy of time at customer, Optrak can be linked to your own POD or tracking data to achieve a more accurate model of the time at each customer site – allowing different profiles for each customer if required. This same analysis can be used to identify consistently slow-loading customers to allow sales or operations staff to negotiate directly with the customer to improve performance.
Real-Time Routing
With Optrak4 , you can add new collection orders to the plan. These orders are checked against the existing routes – taking into account what has already been delivered and picked up – to see if they can be inserted without impacting the time windows/delivery capacity for already routed orders.
All trip building actions, whether optimisation or interactive trip editing are always checked against the appropriate loader for the vehicle (and you can have different loaders for different vehicle types in the same data set). Any infringement of loading rules is immediately indicated to the user.
Carrier Rates and Assignment
On a daily basis, Optrak4’s integrated carrier functionality plugs your 3rd party carrier options into the optimiser to identify which areas could be run more cost effectively by a subcontractor – calculating against total cost to the route of tasking vehicles for specific regions or jobs.
At a strategic level, “What If?” analysis can be used to review long-term decisions over where to route directly and where to negotiate more permanent 3rd party arrangements.
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
FUCHS
Fuchs Lubricants UK PLC, part of the Fuchs Group, the world’s largest independent lubricants company, use Optrak4’s customised vehicle routing and scheduling solution to plan operations in the UK.
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.