Very often, a logistics organisation allocates a large portion of its resources to various systems controlling individual aspects of the transportation business. It is very seldom that a central management system implemented is able to make the transportation process efficient and more cost effective. OPTIMA is a complete transport management system that complements existing order-management, forecasting, warehouse-management and financial-administration systems. It acts as an intelligent control centre, by

• collating orders from a variety of integrated order-processing, replenishment and forecasting systems,
• integrating with OPSI's feature-rich PLATO engine to build optimal loads using sophisticated algorithms that honour operational and physical constraints,
• optimizing service performance by efficiently procuring transportation using haulier rating information and on-line load publication,
• maintaining up-to-date load statuses by retrieving vehicle allocations as well as despatch, delivery and proof-of-delivery information directly from the warehouse,
• enhancing the visibility of shipments by providing vehicle GPS tracking information via the integration of a variety of third-party service providers,
• managing debtor and creditor contracts and tariff structures to enable the system to allocate accurate transportation costs and revenue information, and
• providing intuitive user interfaces to easily manage the volumes of data naturally associated with any successful logistics organisation.

The OPTIMA system is built around six core components.

Order Management

OPTIMA provides a repository to collate high volumes of orders, called service requests. Service requests describe the logical movement of articles of trade between two points, and may include additional information such as

• required cross-dock locations,
• particular delivery window information,
• client tariff details,
• value of the goods for insurance purposes,
• priority, source, and other order reference information.

Service requests can be simple fixed quantity orders, or more advanced 'must-go/can-go' requests. Reducing orders (must-go:can-go orders defined over a time period) are also supported.

The process of service request collation is performed from a variety of integrated external sources which may include ERP order management, replenishment or forecasting systems. With the appropriate permissions, users are also able to manually enter ad-hoc service requests directly into OPTIMA.

Planning

In order to provide cutting edge scheduling functionality, OPTIMA is tightly integrated to PLATOTM, OPSI's sophisticated optimizer and scheduler. Using advanced algorithms to honour physical and operational constraints, the scheduler builds optimal, cost-effective loads, called trips. Whereas service requests provide corresponding logical information, trips provide a realistic physical description of the movement of product by making use of

• extensive road network data,
• stop-time learning,
• loading bay information,
• drop shunting, and
• cross-docking.

OPTIMA's planning functionality also includes efficient procurement of transportation. Both internal fleets and those of contracted hauliers are rated according to tariff-history and performance on specific routes. OPTIMA decides automatically or manually on the best available haulier and publishes the trip information. The haulier is notified of, and responds to a published trip via

• a web interface,
• email,
• SMS (publication only), or
• phone or fax contact by an operator.
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Track-and-Trace'

OPTIMA manages transportation execution, called the 'track-and-trace' process by

• allowing the re-allocation of trips to vehicles in real-time, either via an application or web interface,
• providing warehouses with a web interface to supply information upon vehicle despatch,
• monitoring the progress of the trip by updating vehicle locations either via manual web-based updates or automatically, using GPS satellite tracking data collected from a variety of integrated third-party service providers,
• displaying daily schedules and actual tracked routes in an intuitive vector map interface,
• collecting delivery-related information via a warehouse web interface, and
• providing the ability to capture proof-of-delivery information necessary for accurate financial administration.

Since OPTIMA has access to both the planned and actual descriptions of each trip, comparisons can be made to assist in continually improving the planning process.

Financial Administration

Improved planning, management and execution can have a marked effect on the cost of goods sold and bottom-line financial performance.

OPTIMA is designed to complement existing financial systems by acting as a source of invoice and purchase order information. The system uses electronic vouchers to accumulate both accounts-payable and accounts-receivable information including

• transportation costs,
• overhead costs,
• customer charges.

Transportation costs and invoice amounts are both described by advanced tariff structures, often including multiple charges defined by fixed or variable amounts.

The financial administration process is complemented by a set of standard financial reports with the option to include custom-written reports, if required.

Data Management and Supporting Processes

The successful implementation of any sophisticated system depends partly on effective data management. OPTIMA provides intuitive user interfaces that includes management of the following:

• client and haulier information,
• contract and tariff information, for both accounts-payable and accounts-receivable,
• details of warehouse locations and geographic areas, including road network maintenance and automatic geocoding of new sites, and
• logistics-related information, such as loading bays and stop times.

A number of supporting processes enhance the security and transparency of the OPTIMA system, including:

• comprehensive reporting,
• detailed auditing and logging of system activities,
• multi-user functionality using role-based security and user profiles, and
• managing archival data.
  

Integration

Currently, integration to external systems is accomplished by interfacing to IBM’s Websphere MQ system. However, since OPTIMA's integration is accomplished via a robust XML-based interface standard, any system interfaces can be tailored to an organisation's requirements.

Conclusion

OPTIMA is ideally suited to both larger businesses, requiring efficient management of a variety of disjoint logistics systems, and smaller organisations, whose growing business needs demand a sophisticated method of managing the transportation process.