April/May 2003

A routing and scheduling system for smaller businesses has been launched by Masternaut, the company which last year introduced a low-cost vehicle tracking system in the UK.

The system was developed in France by Masternaut's parent company, and can be used independently of the tracking system if required. But Masternaut says its real strength emerges in its ability to make use of real-life data produced by the tracking system to fine-tune its settings (for instance, by adding extra delivery time where this is shown to be necessary).

The system offers a full set of basic routing and scheduling capabilities, including multi-site scheduling, and is built round a scheduling algorithm developed by Masternaut in association with a French-based systems house. The proposed routes are shown on a map displayed by Microsoft MapPoint software.

The system costs £15 per vehicle per month, and will usually be provided on lease, although it can be hosted either remotely or locally by the operator.

 

Masternaut's UK managing director Martin Port told m.logistics the tracking system "is not trying to rival the sophistication of something like Paragon." He says it is better suited to smaller companies who could not afford the more expensive packages. "It's because a lot of them are so powerful and expensive that routing and scheduling is so little used at the moment."

Masternaut says it has already picked up 85 UK customers. It was one of the first UK users of Microsoft's MapPoint.Net mapping to display tracking information online (but the locally-hosted version is used for the routing and scheduling). Already in the pipeline is a navigation system that will deliver route information to drivers' handheld computers in real time.