Tourline Express minimises costs with the Optrak vehicle routing software

April 28, 2011 - PRLog -- Optrak Distribution Software Ltd today announced that Tourline Express (TE) a company based in Spain, entirely owned by CTT- Correios de Portugal, SA (the Portuguese Post Office) has created a business control system in which Optrak is used in an innovative way.

Tourline is the fourth largest courier operator in Spain, and its nationwide operation is based on 274 local offices and 25 intermediate platforms for the consolidation and re-routing of parcels.  The parcels are accepted at a local office (origin), processed and forwarded to the local office serving the area where the final destination is located. Approximtely 93% of the local offices are franchises, with the remaining being owned by Tourline. Every local office manages the delivery of the parcels whose final destinations belong to their area of operation.  There are fixed clients (B2B) and occasional clients (B2C).

The challenge for Tourline is to calculate acceptable payment levels, per quarter, for the distribution work carried out in each of 274 local offices. Before the implementation of Optrak, Tourline would pay the local offices based only on the number of parcels delivered.  With Optrak, a new variable was introduced: the distance traveled in each local office for carrying out the work. The payment for one quarter is based on the numbers gathered for the previous quarter.

For each of the 274 local offices, 6 significant days of service from the previous quarter are analysed and the corresponding trips are generated and analysed.

To carry out this task, approximately 80,000 points have to be positioned correctly on the map, 274 Optrak projects have to be created (one for each local office) and trips for each of the 6 days have to be calculated making a total of 1644 solutions generated with several trips per solution). The key performance indicators are generated automatically as a result of the 1644 optimisations, and represent the basis of the negotiation process for the payment of the work in the current quarter.

To determine the coordinates of the delivery points - an operation that starts with addresses written by the Tourline customers without any rules and with no concern for consistency or adherence to a norm - the company developed a methodology supported by standard tools made available to users, at no cost, via the Internet.

This methodology keeps track of all the delivery addresses, and incorporates that knowledge systematically, making the process of determining the coordinates easier and more automated, but also allowing for any changes the user might want to make. In this fashion, the problem of determining the coordinates of non-uniform addresses is solved correctly, with the help of widely available tools and at a very low cost for the user.

After getting the delivery coordinates, the Optrak sites and orders input files are generated for the 6 days to be considered for each local office. 274 projects are created and the data files with the basic data (e.g. sites, orders, fleet and drivers) are imported.  The corresponding trips are created by the Optrak optimiser and the results extracted from Optrak’s database using ODBC.  Following this Tourline can prepare detailed reports containing data describing the trips and numbers consolidated for each local office.  This is the basis of the negotiation process and, consequently, of the payments to be made by Tourline to their franchisees.

The entire process following the calculation of the coordinates is automated.  Tourline uses Javascripts to do this and Optrak (http://optrak.com/features/optimising) is used as the optimisation engine (http://optrak.com/applications/strategicplanning).

The use of the processes described above allowed Tourline, according to Fernando Sequeira Salvador, Executive Director of the company, “to maintain the quality of the distribution network and the service levels, with no cost increases even in the current economic crisis. Had the new processes not been implemented, the increase in costs per year would be significant. The results are commonly accepted and the payments made for the distribution operation are fairer for all parties involved.  It is understood that the current level of savings will continue in the years to come.”

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About Optrak: Optrak Distribution Software Limited (http://www.optrak.com) has been supplying award winning vehicle routing solutions for over 22 years. Optrak has a wealth of experience in creating flexible solutions to real business problems faced by companies operating transport and distribution fleets.

Deployment of Optrak typically leads to a reduction of between 5% and 15% of transport costs. Administration is streamlined. Mileage and fuel consumption are minimised. Transport utilisation is increased. Management information and control is increased.

Optrak has been chosen by many of the leading companies in Europe. Clients include Fuchs Lubricants, Menzies Distribution, DeliveryCo, Total, 3663 and Matthew Clark.