The Solution
Putting Optrak at the heart of a sophisticated supply chain
The Optrak vehicle routing solution is used at Brakes' Egham depot to
dynamically schedule a fleet of 80 vehicles delivering grocery orders,
ambient, chilled and frozen goods. In-cab communications and
SatNav/fleet tracking are fully integrated with Optrak Business
Intelligence and Optrak Real-Time to drive Brakes' depot operations.
John Burgess, Operations Manager for Brakes, said: 'We wanted to
introduce more efficient planning with Optrak but also to enable drivers
to work effectively within a dynamic scheduling environment. The
project therefore expanded to look at integrating in-cab communications,
satellite navigation and vehicle routing. Of the available vehicle
routing solutions, Optrak's major advantage was that it had the
flexibility to cope with the range of demanding requirements at Brakes.'
The scheduler uses Optrak to plan efficient vehicle routes and
loading plans, reviewing the schedule using local knowledge to fine tune
and finalise the routes. Drivers are navigated to each customer via a
SatNav unit. The arrival and departure times are captured and stored for
analysis and reporting.
Brakes' customer services team constantly monitors the status of each
trip. Optrak can automatically flag up where issues are arising before
they have impacted on the customer. For example, if a delivery is going
to be late, the customer services team can proactively call the customer
and if necessary reschedule the delivery.