Foodservice specialist Arthur David is taking control of its distribution costs and improving customer service by implementing a dynamic scheduling and route optimization solution from Magenta Technology.
The United Kingdom-based distributor of fresh food offers a next-day delivery service for schools, conference centers and hotels. Implementation of the cloud-based Maxoptra Distribution platform will build on the company’s high service standards. Offering improved operational efficiencies—and therefore greater control of costs—Maxoptra will also enable Arthur David to realize improvements in customer service. Adoption of Maxoptra Distribution will be alongside the rollout of TomTom Pro driver terminals.
Arthur David operates up to 90 delivery vehicles from its headquarters in the Chew Valley, Somerset. The six-days-a-week service covers neighboring counties, including the major urban areas of Bristol, Reading, Cardiff and Birmingham. With up to 70 individual runs per day, each making between 30 and 40 drops, this equates to around 2,500 customer orders delivered daily. Arthur David estimates that around 80% of these orders require defined delivery windows.
Jon Evans, managing director of Arthur David, said, “Currently, every customer is allocated to a fixed route with a sequence number, but this doesn’t take into account operational costs or other factors such as efficient vehicle utilization, vehicle capacity and driving hours.
“Using Maxoptra, we will, in the first instance, re-sequence our current routes to make them more efficient, and we calculate this will net considerable annual savings,” said Evans. “This will also give us early notification of possible violations, such as overloaded or missed delivery slots. As we move forward, Maxoptra will be used to produce daily dynamic optimized routes, potentially increasing savings already gained by a factor of 10. Integrated with the TomTom in-cab devices, the Maxoptra solution will also boost our customer service as we will have real-time visibility of each vehicle in order to keep our customers informed.”
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