Logistics company TNT has gone live with a global roll-out of
Paragon routing software which will provide it with a common
operating platform across its 60-country international
presence.
The c400,000 (£255,500) project will create savings in operational
costs such as fuel, labour and vehicles. It will allow the company
to pitch for new business quickly and accurately by efficiently
calculating optimised route information for about 1,000 top clients
and a network which spans more than 600 depots in 60 countries, TNT
has said.
Chief information officer Luigi Pezzini said the company did not
attempt to quantify return on investment.
"When you have a very large project you should quantify your
returns but in this case you can understand the advantages by
common good sense," he said.
Pezzini said using a common solution globally will allow better
internal and external communication, give a common way of working
and enable support for the software, which will not be limited by
location, to be rationalised.
The software will allow TNT to quickly calculate the most efficient
way of routing vehicles between depots and customer destinations so
that the maximum number of calls is made by the least number of
vehicles.
Data needed to generate optimised routes has to be hand-fed into
the software, but Pezzini's goal is to develop the ability to feed
this data into the system automatically.
The c400,000 cost for the initial phase of the deal involved TNT
Logistics buying licences which will see the logistics optimisation
software rolled out from its existing limited implementation to the
whole of the organisation.
Simon Bragg, an analyst with ARC Consulting, said, "The basic
problem is that there are too many trucks on the roads, running too
many [empty or partly empty] miles. Why?
"Logistics companies tend to run each customer site independently,
and users still pay for dedicated fleets.
"In a recent survey only 36% of logistics managers reported running
trucks at more than 90% capacity on outward journeys while only 18%
run at 90% capacity on return journeys," said Bragg.
"Best practice is to centralise the procurement, planning and
execution of logistics services, which requires Web-enabled
technologies. This means you see all outbound and inbound
movements, and utilise backhaul and loadsharing opportunities," he
added.