Route Optimisation Cuts Costs For Food Service Specialist

Arthur David, the food service specialist, is taking control of its distribution costs and improving customer service by implementing a dynamic scheduling and route optimisation solution. The west-country based distributor of fresh food offers a next day delivery service for schools, conference centres and hotels, and, it says, “the implementation of the cloud based Maxoptra Distribution platform will build on the company’s already high service standards”. Offering improved operational efficiencies, and therefore a greater control of costs, Maxoptra will also enable Arthur David to realise improvements in customer service. The adoption of the Maxoptra Distribution solution will be alongside the roll out of TomTom Pro driver terminals.

Arthur David operates up to 90 delivery vehicles from its headquarters in the Chew Valley, Somerset. The six days a week service covers the neighbouring counties, including the major urban conurbations of Bristol, Reading, Cardiff and Birmingham. With up to 70 individual runs per day, each making between 30 and 40 drops, this equates to around 2,500 customer orders delivered each day, of which Arthur David estimates that around 80 percent require defined delivery windows.

“Our customers can, and do, place orders up to 2300 hours for delivery the next day, but the nature and scale of each order can vary enormously,” commented Jon Evans, Managing Director of Arthur David. “Currently, every customer is allocated to a fixed route with a sequence number, but this doesn’t take into account operational costs or other factors such as efficient vehicle utilisation, vehicle capacity and driving hours.

“Using Maxoptra, we will, in the first instance, re-sequence our current routes to make them more efficient and we calculate this will net considerable annual savings,” continued Evans. “This will also give us early notification of possible violations, such as overloaded or missed delivery slots. As we move forward, Maxoptra will be used to produce daily dynamic optimised routes, potentially increasing savings already gained by a factor of 10! Integrated with the TomTom in cab devices, the Maxoptra solution will also boost our customer service as we will have real time visibility of each vehicle in order to keep our customers informed.”