Descartes Systems Group (DSGX) announced that Lancaster Farm Fresh Organics (LFFO) is using the Descartes Route Planner On-demand solution to more efficiently deliver freshly picked produce to wholesale markets and community-supported agriculture (CSA) members.
“Our mission is to deliver healthy, high-quality food within 24 hours of being picked,” said Ben Kreider, transportation director at LFFO. “With Descartes, we have a tool that automates and optimizes route planning and driver scheduling for picking up produce from over 160 family farms and delivering to market shelves and CSA members’ hands. As our transportation needs grow, this level of efficiency is fundamental to ensuring that we maintain the responsiveness and product quality that our farmers and customers have come to expect.”
Using Descartes Route Planner On-demand, LFFO has shifted away from manual fleet management processes to get farmers’ products to the warehouse on one day and out to customers the next day.
The cloud-based solution provides an easy and affordable way to plan, optimize, and dispatch routes, then track and monitor delivery fleets in real time. It manages static and dynamic routes to maximize fleet utilization while respecting customer service requirements by taking into account geographic information, time windows, and other business constraints when planning pick-ups and deliveries.
“We’re pleased to help LFFO grow and set itself apart from competitors in the fresh foods industry by using automation to run a more productive, yet customer-centric transportation operation,” said Andrew Roszko, senior vice-president of sales at Descartes. “For distribution-intensive companies like LFFO, it’s becoming an increasingly complex process to simultaneously reduce distribution costs while maintaining high service levels. Descartes’ routing and mobile solutions are specifically designed to assist in balancing these objectives during planning, capturing key information as routes get executed, and measuring how actual routes perform against plans to enable continuous improvement.”
Since 2008, LFFO has been delivering freshly picked produce to wholesale markets and members with as little turnaround time as possible. It is a non-profit organic farmer’s cooperative of more than 100 family farmers headquartered in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania that provides fresh, certified organic fruits, vegetables, and other farm fresh products to wholesalers and through the CSA program.
Learn more at www.descartes.com.
