July/Aug 2005

Developments in the office and out in the field are making routing and scheduling applications more affordable and more responsive, reports Sharon Clancy, who explains why dynamic scheduling makes increasingly good sense

The days when you could schedule your deliveries, load the trucks and then forget about them until they returned to base have long gone. Too many unpredictable events can happen while they're out, resulting in unacceptable delays. Causes range from traffic congestion to slow loading and queues at call points. Whatever the reason, delays reduce the chances that you'll complete your schedules as originally planned.

One answer that has been floated regularly in recent years is dynamic scheduling - in other words, monitoring the progress of your vehicles and drivers in real time while they're out doing the collections or deliveries, and in some cases actually changing the current plan to reflect events, and instructing the drivers accordingly.

In the past, many operators dismissed real-time dynamic scheduling as not applicable to their routes and operations; but there are now signs that more are becoming interested. It may not always possible to re-route vehicles that are already out and about, but there are other good reasons to monitor their progress against the planned schedule - either in real time or soon afterwards.

 

Key attractions include the ability to notify customers of any delays; the ability to alert them to imminent deliveries - hopefully minimising drop-point delays; and the ability to formulate tomorrow's plans dynamically, ensuring that missed or problematic deliveries are rectified more quickly.

And as this monitoring becomes more reactive and quicker, the logical extension - to re-route vehicles out in the field in a genuinely dynamic fashion - becomes increasingly plausible.

Chris Wright, managing director of systems house SkillWeb, sums up the big attraction. 'Real-time knowledge of a delay is invaluable if it happens early on his route,' he says. 'The system can work out the effect on the other planned deliveries and the transport manager can take the appropriate action.'

Wright believes visibility of what the workforce is up to in actual time is as important as planning. 'Capturing data on what happens on a day-to-day basis, such as delays at distribution centres, can be highly beneficial to efficiency. It allows you to go to that customer, and in a non-confrontational way point out the effect his actions are having on your operation.'

Dynamic rescheduling is not new. Several of the established scheduling specialists have experimented with it over the years. During the 1990s, for instance, MapMechanics supplied its TruckStops system to a company transporting people between prisons and courts so that it could change the schedule in real time when urgent pick-up or drop-off requests came up.

Since then, the revolution in real-time communications and reporting and the universal availability of the Internet have made dynamic scheduling much easier to implement. But it does need feedback after every drop, as Wayne Saville of routing and scheduling specialist DPS-Logix points out.

'Re-evaluating the plan after every delivery allows you to input the data into your strategic planning system,' he says. 'Use the routing and scheduling software to generate the basic plan and then monitor it in action. If you are serious about improving the percentage of on-time deliveries, the traffic office needs the time to analyse every drop. They know the business; they know where the bottlenecks are. The software is clever, but it has to be usable and flexible.'

DPS's Track-LogiX Professional software combines tracking with routing, allowing operators to compare where vehicles are with where they should be, and do it in real time, and then take corrective action when necessary.

Fleet Controller from Paragon, another scheduling specialist, provides a complete picture of vehicle movements at the end of each day, and automatically generates daily performance and exception reports showing missed time windows, unloading delays, excess mileage, and instances and where less time was spent than planned. Paragon says Fleet Controller costs from 50p per day when added to an existing Paragon routing and scheduling operation.

'Planned versus actual performance can be viewed in table form or through interactive displays,' says Phil Ingham, Paragon's support director. 'For example, added map display functionality enables you to look at a replay of the day's routes, drilling down to find the cause of discrepancies between planned and actual vehicle activity. By using Fleet Controller to identify operational issues, you can refine planning parameters for continuous improvement.'

There is inevitably scepticism about the practicalities of actually re-routing trucks in real time, and there's no denying that the feasibility depends on the vehicle, its load and the type of delivery route it is on. If it's essential to do the deliveries in reverse order of loading, re-routing might not be much help. The driver may not be able to access the right bits of the load out of sequence. And you can't of course deliver product that isn't on board in the first place, or isn't available in right quantities or configuration for customers who weren't part of the original schedule.

However, it's important to remember that even if you don't redirect the vehicles that are out delivering now, it can still be invaluable to have delivery problems reported back to you automatically in real time. Then you can respond more swiftly.

Various scheduling systems can be linked to wireless communications systems to provide this kind of information. Among the latest is MapMechanics Mobile, a new system which integrates office-based routing and scheduling (any system, the company says) with in-cab navigation such as TomTom. One of the primary objectives here is to feed delivery coordinates automatically to a satnav system, so that drivers don't have to type in details of each call as it comes up. But the system also allows delivery details (including delays) to be fed back to base in real time.

'It means operators know earlier in the day when there are delivery problems,' says MapMechanics' managing director Mary Short. 'They can cycle missed orders more promptly into the next day's delivery schedule, as well as passing the information automatically to customers - perhaps via a closed-loop intranet.'

There are of course plenty of delivery runs where real-time re-routing really is possible, and the difficulty should not deter planners from trying. That's the positive advice of JŸrgen Gieger, Map&Guide's director of business products.

'The key is to ensure the re-routing information is appropriate,' he says, 'and keeps to the same criteria used for the original route planning. It must take into account load, height and weight restrictions. Otherwise lorries might find themselves stuck in narrow town centres or quiet residential areas, polluting historical old towns or hitting low bridges.'

Map&Guide's off-the-shelf routing and scheduling software delivers maps and routing information to a driver's cab via a PDA, which acts as a mobile order management system. Re-routing comes through as a text message, and schedules are automatically changed.

Maximising driver time

Allocating drivers to particular route has taken on renewed importance with the introduction of the Road Transport Directive. To calculate working time available, you need to know the approximate waiting time at each drop - the period of availability when the driver is neither working nor driving.

Paragon's latest software development has been to add functionality to help planners optimise resources under RTD. The scheduling reports and displays can be exported as HTML documents so that other people outside the transport office who need to see the schedule can do so via a web browser.

Tracking systems specialists have also weighed in here. Masternaut, for instance, has introduced Hourtrak, which uses unique driver ID keys linked to the company's Internet-based satellite tracking solution.ÊThe driver ID system ensures that there is no confusion over who is driving at a nyparticular time. Through the addition of a dashboard data terminal, the driver can easily switch his or her status to record working and non-working time.

JŸrgen Gieger of Map&Guide believes that the smart use of IT and telecoms is one of the few routes yet not exploited to its full potential to increase fleet efficiency. 'The rise in the use of mobile communication devices and the increased development in converged technologies makes it an inevitable growth area.'

Low-cost live tracking

Live updates require live vehicle tracking, and cheap GPRS mobile communications have reduced the cost of this dramatically. 'Integration of live vehicle tracking into scheduling modules allows managers to see immediately how the day's schedules are going, and understand the knock-on effect of any delays,' points out Charles Nockold, marketing and business development director for Paragon. 'Transport managers get early warning of impending late arrivals, and customers get automatic notification of an imminent delivery (twenty minutes away, for example) by SMS or email. These are major service improvements, all facilitated by linking frequent GPRS vehicle tracking.'

The interfaces in today's routing and scheduling systems (increasingly using industry-standard XML) enable them to accept tracking data from a wide range of systems. Every time a position update is received, the scheduling system can recalculate the journey time to the next customer and update the timings for the rest of the schedule. Some, such as Paragon's Fleet Controller, can even take account of the legal requirement for drivers to have a break at given points to comply with drivers' hours.

Vehicle tracking is also important for driver navigation aids. 'On-route navigation plays a vital role in helping companies move from fixed schedules (where each driver has a specific route of set of routes and knows all the drop points) to flexible scheduling,' says MapMechanics' Mary Short. 'Apparent efficiency gains from flexible scheduling can be lost in greater inefficiency in execution, because the driver spends more time searching for an unfamiliar address. On-route navigation resolves that problem. It also vastly increases the capability of agency drivers to complete schedules.'

Digital mapping street-level mapping

MapMechanics' TruckStops and Paragon's routing and scheduling systems are among those that now come with street-level digital map data built in. Street-level map data offers enhanced accuracy and road geometry, turn restriction information and better display qualities. Its street-level routing is designed to improve scheduling performance on dense delivery-drop operations, and can provide detailed directions for drivers.

The latest Version of TruckStops has more interactive features. Journey plans can be displayed against the user's own choice of map, and it is easier to amend optimised journeys interactively on the screen and drag whole groups of call points directly from one route to another and immediately see the results. 'Operators love this,' says Mary Short. 'There's no substitute for seeing what's happening right in front of you on a real map.'

Server-based applications

Routing and scheduling systems have traditionally been hosted on client PCs, but there is a move towards server-based 'thin client' software running on various PCs in the company. For large operators, the same principle applies, though they may be using clusters of servers and Citrix to manage allocation or resources.

Multi-user systems allow several operators to work on the same transport plan at the same time. Companies benefit from central planning efficiencies, but local users can still review and modify the transport plan for their depot.

Even more cutting edge is Internet-based pay-as-you-go scheduling and routing. Both DPS International and Descartes have launched such services in the UK.

DPS's Logixcentral is based on its LogiX family of routing and scheduling products, and will be available via a dedicated Internet site called www.logixcentral.com. Paul Palmer, DPS chairman, is convinced Loxigxcentral will appeal to companies who have shied away from routing systems in the past.

'It will also revolutionise the way the major 3PL companies use computerised scheduling tools,' he predicts. The pay-as-you-go service allows smaller companies to check and reschedule regular routes as often as needed, using the system for strategic planning and to evaluate the effect the Road Transport Directive, for example, is having on vehicle utilisation.

Logixcentral is also seen as a solution for multi-depot fleets, with access via a corporate intranet.

Another company that has developed a hosted routing and scheduling service is VSc Solutions, which is offering this as part of its larger Dispatch Dynamic supply-chain management suite. The company claims that it can typically save users between half and two thirds of the cost of selecting, installing and running a routing application package in-house, with the inherent internal IT overheads.

The company charges on a cost per order/cost per route basis, and Anthony Munro-Martin, head of its mobile division, says users should be able to expect a benchmark saving of around 10 to 14 per cent from reduced routing costs. The actual software is being supplied by an unnamed but leading third-party routing and scheduling specialist, so its pedigree looks assured.

Descartes has been trialling an Internet-based version of its Roadshow Express routing and scheduling system in the US with Coca-Cola SouthEast, New England, and Home Hardware Stores in Canada, and is now bringing the service to Europe. The Internet service is aimed at companies who have 50 vehicles or fewer, and run them on fixed delivery routes. A team of Descartes' in-house experts will work with such companies to build optimal routes and territory plans that meet their specific requirements

Affordability

Cost has been a deterrent in the past. By its very nature, routing and scheduling needs to be customised to some degree to each operation. William Slater, manager director of Paragon, says the potential benefit is 'generally far larger' than the purchase price. He cites a 20-vehicle operation with an annual transport cost of £800,000. 'A 10 per cent efficiency improvement would recover a Paragon investment in four months and contribute £80,000 a year to profitability.'

Other software developers are however trying to win over small and medium fleets with slimmed-down routing and scheduling software, pay-as-you-go Internet-based software. You can even get routing and scheduling help on some freight exchanges (Freight Traders has teamed up with MapMechanics, for example.)

Real-time scheduling - in advance

Operators involved in last-mile home delivery operations are increasingly adopting live scheduling tools - allocating delivery slots as each order is received, whether on the Internet, by phone or in the store.

This is often referred to as 'dynamic scheduling', although it's not the same as rescheduling while vehicles are out on the road. In effect, it's 'reshuffling' the advance plan progressively, sometimes over a matter of days, as the delivery time approaches, rather than fixing it in tablets of stone at a given point in time, which is the more traditional approach.

More and more scheduling specialists now offer this facility, including Skillweb and MapMechanics, with its GeoConcept system. This uses a slot template, with historical data used to allocate delivery times. Once the slot is filled, the data is transferred to the scheduling program to do the actual planning.

Paragon has re-engineered its software so that it can run in real time as well as batch mode to allow users to update delivery routes as new orders come in. The schedule is re-optimised every time a new order is received, so goods originally allocated to one vehicle can be switched to another, while still meeting the promised delivery slot.

'Some people claim this type of scheduling is inefficient, but it can help reduce the level of failed deliveries, which is a key cost factor in this sector,' points out the company's Nockold. 'The software checks the feasibility and transport efficiency of the delivery slot before it is offered to the customer, so it is already optimised to be time- and cost-efficient from a transport point of view.' Customers don't have to wait in so long for a delivery, reducing the risked of a failed delivery, he adds.

Descartes System's RIMMs software and UPS Logistics' Roadnet Transportation suite (sold in the UK by 121 Systems) are also designed for this type of live scheduling. When a new order is received, the relevant part of the schedule is recalculated.

Sidewinder's RealTIME Scheduler is the scheduling system behind the Sainsbury's to You home delivery service, which offers one-hour delivery slots. For any given time slot, there are a finite number of stores, drivers, pickers and vehicles available to fulfil each order. RealTIME Scheduler balances customer demand against the available resource at the customer's local store.