Paragon Software Systems is adding a “territory optimizer” planning module to help dispatchers create territories with balanced workloads within distribution or service routes. Using the optional module to pre-plan before running the routes and schedules through Paragon ensures compact delivery zones for efficient routing, which reduces transport costs, improves driver productivity, and advances customer service levels, the company said.
“This solution is perfect for a company whose drivers reps work in a particular delivery or service territory,” said William Salter, president & CEO. “The software provides optimized territories that reduce road miles and have achievable daily workloads. It calculates territories using accurate travel calculations and allows for time spent at each customer site. This provides a full and true picture of each driver’s territory together with his or her assigned jobs.”
Paragon said the module provides advantages for two types of delivery: when customers need to be served by a regular driver or when a depot can deliver to different areas on different days.
When each driver needs to have a designated group of regular customers, the software allows planners to set up efficient delivery zones with appropriate and achievable trips for each driver. Each zone will contain enough work for the driver to cover within a given period. This information is uploaded to the Paragon routing and scheduling software to calculate optimized routes and schedules, with each customer allocated a number and each route handling a single zone.
If delivering to different customer areas on different days, the software can divide the delivery areas according to days of the week. This results in the desired number of zones with balanced workloads across the working week. The information is then input to the routing and scheduling system to optimize resources, routes and costs for each zone and day of the week.
