SABMiller Division Chooses FLO from OPSI Systems to Handle Routing and Scheduling for their Entire Fleet
FLO Replaces SAB’s Existing Planning System In All 42 of SAB’s Depots
Country-Wide
Johannesburg, South Arica, May 30, 2006: OPSI Systems today announced that it has been awarded a contract to provide SAB, the South African division of SABMiller Inc. and the second largest beer distribution company in the world, with FLO, its flagship routing and scheduling system. FLO was chosen to replace SAB's existing planning system in all 42 of SAB's depots country-wide. The implementation process, which includes a tight integration with SAB's SAP system, has already started and is scheduled to be completed in all depots later this year.
OPSI Systems has had a working relationship with SAB for many years - with implementations in Mozambique, Swaziland and locally through SAB affiliate Amalgamated Beverage Industries (ABI), the local Coca-Cola distributor. With the success of these ongoing projects, it was natural for SAB to consider OPSI Systems when they were ready to change products. In the latter half of 2005, SAB began a process of evaluation of various routing and scheduling systems to replace their existing system, which they were not entirely happy with.
SAB examined a number of planning systems and after extensive trials, including parallel runs, FLO was chosen to be used for their entire fleet. The following advantages of FLO were identified:
- FLO has much stronger routing algorithms giving better and cheaper routing solutions.
- The number of manual changes needing to be made to the routes is minimal in FLO, but was extensive with the previously used product, even with its newest release.
- FLO has complete and simultaneous integration with all major tracking solutions.
- FLO is easier to use with a more modern point, drag and click interface.
- The time taken by the planner on routing was reduced by about 1 1/2 hours daily.
These features combined with the fact that FLO can be tailored to the specific needs of the company and can be tightly integrated with SAB’s SAP system, and the fact that OPSI Systems has had a successful relationship with SAB affiliates for many years, made FLO a natural choice.
Desmond Jacobs, SAB's National Distribution Development Manager, says "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."
A number of new features have been added to FLO to accommodate the specific needs at SAB. These include: the ability to spread the workload amongst a given number of vehicles to accommodate driver contracts, a new feature to stagger the departure times of vehicles, and explicit modeling of horses and trailers as separate items. Also, the customer, product, vehicle and driver masters are all maintained in SAP and shared dynamically with FLO as needed.
For more information, please contact:
OPSI Systems ®
|
About SAB
SABMiller plc is one of the world's largest brewers with brewing interests or distribution agreements in over 60 countries across five continents. Born in 1895, SAB Ltd is the South African subsidiary of SABMiller plc, one of
the largest brewers by volume in the world. SAB plc acquired the Miller Brewing
Company in July 2002 and SABMiller was formed.
SAB operates seven breweries and 42 depots in South Africa with the brand portfolio of ten beers and two flavoured alcohol drinks (FADs).
SAB has an annual brewing capacity of 3.1-billion litres.
SAB Limited employs 4800 at SAB and, including ABI, now some 8200 people in South Africa.
About OPSI Systems
OPSI Systems is a software development and consulting house based in Johannesburg, South Africa. We focus exclusively on tools and services related to the supply chain, with a specific focus on vehicle logistics and demand prediction. We supply off-the-shelf routing and scheduling tools but also welcome work on custom projects for individual clients.
Key customers:
SABMiller, Clover, Barloworld Logistics, ABI (Coca Cola), Unitrans, UPS Logistics, Value Logistics, Exel, Reckitt Benkeiser, and many more.
About FLO™ (Fleet Logistics Optimiser)
The flagship of our product line is FLO (Fleet Logistics Optimizer). FLO is a multi-drop fleet routing and scheduling tool with many unique features. These include the ability to model a rich set of real world constraints including delivery windows, vehicle exclusions, product exclusions, multiple shifts, individual working hours by vehicle, multiple-container vehicles, trailer and associated constraints, as well as many others. FLO also features deep integration with GPS tracking to learns travel and stop times, to give updated ETA’s, and to detect unauthorized stops. On the accounting side, FLO has strong stop cost calculations and a complete delivery de-brief module this means that complete delivery contracts can be run using only FLO to handle all aspects of the planning and execution of the delivery .
OPSI Systems® and FLO ™ are trademarks of OPSI Systems CC. All other trademarks and registered trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners.
