Parcelforce IT boosts productivity
Logistics firm Parcelforce Worldwide has improved driver productivity by 20% after rolling out route planning and scheduling software.
Parcelforce also cut route planning time for its 2,000-vehicle operation by 90% after replacing a system based on Excel with software from Paragon.
The company, which delivers 150,000 parcels a day, uses the software to allocate work to routes and calculate efficient route sequences. This helps it plan driver start and finish times, mileage, the number of drops and driver and van utilisation.
Eddie McBride, project manager at Parcelforce, said, “Improving driver productivity by 20% has enabled us to reduce the number of drivers and the number of vehicles we need to use to achieve the same, if not higher, levels of service.”
The software runs on Windows 2000 Server and holds details of historical delivery patterns. It also contains information on vehicle capacities, work standards and driver shifts.
Using digital mapping with scheduling tools, the software calculates the most effective delivery sequences.
“One of the advantages of using this software is that, now the base data is set up, it is straightforward to update volumes and recalculate the routes accordingly,” Parcelforce said.
