Nov/Dec 2004

A system installed primarily to boost security is also providing valuable performance monitoring data on daily delivery schedules at the Midlands Co-op food retail group. The system is expected to save the organisation over £200,000 in administration and process costs over the next five years.

The 35 vehicles in the fleet, from 17-tonne rigid vehicles to 38-tonne tractor units, deliver both refrigerated and ambient products from the company's two distribution centres in Leicester to its 220 retail stores across the West and East Midlands.

Each vehicle has been fitted with a Maple IQ system from the Maple Group. Altogether, Maple has supplied 300 keyfob transponders, plus a desktop reader/programmer unit to program to seals and fobs, a handheld data downloader, and Maple IQ software.

Once the vehicle is loaded at the distribution centre, the doors are sealed using a Maple IQ transponder. At each delivery point the store manager must check that the seal has not been broken before starting the unload/delivery procedure.

 

He then reseals it using the store's own unique ID transponder fob. All the door-locking and unlocking activity is time-stamped and recorded in the seal, and the data is downloaded remotely once the vehicle is back at the distribution centre.

Midlands Co-op uses the data to monitor actual delivery times to the retail stores and compare them with the planned scheduled times. "This added-value facility from Maple's sealing system provided us with a superb performance monitoring tool, allowing us to work out real-time performances automatically against scheduled times," says the company's Robin Farrell.

At the same time, the Midlands Co-op and Maple are planning to expand the system so that it can carry an electronic manifest with the load, providing the means to track assets such as roll cages and other unit load containers