Case Studies

 

Quotes

“FLO was selected because it provides SAB's distribution with flexibility, reliability and cost-effectiveness. On top of that, OPSI Systems is a company that is willing to adapt their system to include SAB's requirements.” Desmond Jacobs , National Distribution Development Manager for South African Breweries (SAB)

“News from the hub (floor) is that they cannot work without FLO.” Johan Kruger , Planning Supervisor for Value Logistics

“FLO … can simulate even a very complex operation… I will recommend it to any company.” Nico Richter, AEL Contract Manager for Unitrans

“FLO has helped to create and entrench a structured and disciplined environment in which to conduct dispatch and transport operations in general...The main feature of FLO has been the adaptability and flexibility of FLO, to accommodate our specific operational requirements in line with our ERP system.” Willem Botha, Logistics Manager, Air Liquide

"FLO solved the problem of combining orders from different principals to the same customer, both from a warehouse picking, as well as an optimal routing of the combined orders on the distribution side of the business. We were able to go live with the system on extremely tight deadlines". Gerald Field, Warehouse Manager for Imperial Logistics

“We wanted to be able to give the customer an expectation of time and date of delivery at time of order placement and manage that expectation until actual delivery was made, including the tracking of the delivery to ensure the requisite security, cost effectively. I believe that CBASS can do this and more, eg. Transportation costing, facilitating quick turn-around and late loads to improve fleet utilisation and efficiency." Avi Bhoora, Sales and Distribution Manager for NPC

 

 

Natal Portland Cement (NPC)

 

In the first quarter of 2002, NPC (Natal Portland Cement) put out an RFP for a system to handle the booking of orders and dynamic scheduling of deliveries. The cement industry is particularly sensitive to delivery times as building operations can be brought to a halt if the cement (or concrete) does not arrive when promised. This means that cement companies are faced with a difficult balancing act. They must keep their delivery promises, but not at the expense of wasteful under utilization of the fleet. To do this, a system is needed that accurately books delivery times and keeps track of how much resource has been promised at any time.

OPSI Systems was chosen as the developer of the system and the CBASS (Cement Booking and Scheduling System) was produced.

CBASS allows accurate fleet planning and enables realistic delivery time commitments to be made to customers. It handles the dynamic allocation of vehicles to jobs and integrates with GPS tracking to minimize the actual lateness of deliveries.

When an order is added/changed in the ERP system (JDE in this case), a call is made to CBASS to book a time for the order. All available slots are shown in CBASS. The order entry clerk may choose a slot from the available options or try another date/loadsize in CBASS and then book an acceptable slot. Any changes made in CBASS are automatically updated in the JDE.

CBASS regularly synchronises with the ERP system to obtain orders as they are entered. The following up-to-date information is also downloaded: consignee, product, load sizes, standing order, working day calendar and fleet data. CBASS allows for the entry of business rules specific to consignees (delivery windows by day and vehicle exclusions), vehicles/ loadsize matching and the ability to assign reserved space to be filled by priority consignees or long distance deliveries.

The jobs are shown visually using a Gantt chart to display the usage of each vehicle per day. From the Gantt chart, the planned loading time, travelling time and offloading time for each order can be seen. The Gantt chart can also be used for dragging and dropping jobs between vehicles and days.

CBASS uses FLO as a time and distance server. The road network database in FLO provides accurate lead distances and times to each consignee. The maps in FLO are also used for calculating delivery times and viewing delivery points, GPS tracking data and planned routes.

On the delivery day, loads are allocated to vehicles from CBASS dynamically. CBASS takes into account booked offload window durations when deciding the next best load for a vehicle and sends this information to the ERP system when a vehicle returns to the depot.

“Divert” and “carry-over” loads are initiated in the ERP system and are automatically updated in CBASS.

Through FLO, CBASS integrates with the tracking system to provide a view of the schedule progress and to analyse actual against planned deliveries. CBASS also uses tracking data to fine-tune travel and offload times.

Using tracking data, CBASS can be asked to send an SMS to a consignee when the vehicle is a given time away from delivery.

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