Feb-March 2003

Normally, as a reader of m.logistics magazine, you'd be probably interested in Tracker Network from the point of view of the vehicle tracking systems it offers. However, it's the company's use of the Paragon journey scheduling system that makes it a candidate for mention here. Paragon software is usually used to plan vehicle movements, but Tracker Network is using it to schedule the movements of its own service engineers.

Previously the company relied on manual scheduling by planners, who applied their own geographical knowledge to schedule engineers' call-out requests. Now Paragon is used for scheduling their movements nationwide; and one of its attractions, says the company, was its ability to schedule time windows for specific visits.

Paragon plans a rolling seven-day schedule for each service engineer. When processing customer requests, the system works out a selection of routing options, then generates a list of available dates and time windows. These are sorted by Paragon in increasing order of cost, depending on proximity to calls already logged in the part-built schedule.

 

• Another company using Paragon to schedule visits by service engineers is PCServiceCall, which handles home service for the Dixons Group. It has centralised what was previously a regional scheduling function, and reduced work that took four staff three hours a day to a matter of minutes. The system can take account of its 200 engineers' availability and skill levels, the company says.