Building Material Logistics

Construction Materials Transportation - The Challenge _>>
SyncroTESS.BuildMats _>>
Add-on to Traditional IT Systems_>>
Fleet Schedule Optimizer _>>
Regional Truck Fleet Dispatch_>>
Your People and SyncroTESS >>
Financial Benefits _>>


Construction Materials Transportation - The Challenge
 In the building materials industries 15% - 25% of total corporate costs are spent on transportation and product delivery.

The obvious challenge: Optimizing delivery schedules and truck fleet operations in order to facilitate

  • More deliveries per truck
  • Less mileage, fleet operating hours per day
  • Improved on-time delivery, customer service per order

The truck fleet schedule optimization system SyncroTESS is an Advanced Optimization add-on to any order management system. It applies advanced algorithmic technologies to calculate efficient job sequences and fleet schedules, both for DayPlanning and RealTimeDispatch.

The result: Delivering more loads with less trucks while securing customer specific on-time delivery standards

SyncroTESS.BuildMats
SyncroTESS.BuildMats is a special program version designed to optimize deliveries of Ready-mixed Concrete, Aggregates, Asphalt, Cement, Mortar, Bricks, Tiles, and other palletized or bulk loads required at construction sites.

In contrast to conventional order processing & ticketing systems with purely manual fleet dispatch capabilities, SyncroTESS.BuildMats contains mathematical optimisation logic. It dynamically suggests truck allocation & delivery schedules in such way that on-time delivery is maximised while fleet operating hours are dramatically reduced.

The system's Main Module contains all IT Interfaces and the FleetScheduleOptimizer. The system's functional modules are optional:

  • DayPlaning Synchronizing
    customer orders (actual, planned, will-call) with truck resources (owned or permanent contract hauliers) into an optimized daily schedule.

  • FleetSizing
    Optionally also suggesting best selection of non-permanent contract hauliers based on truck demand / availability for that day.

  • RealTimeDispatch
    Real-time order and truck fleet monitoring throughout the current day. Automatic schedule re-optimization in response to any significant situation changes. Full dispatcher support.

  • FleetCommunications
    Automated job assignment and status reporting by way of onboard RF data radio, or SMS short messages.

  • OrderEvaluation
    Assisting the order takers by calculating, while in phone contact with the customer, the likely impact of any incoming order on the total delivery schedule.

Add-on to Traditional IT Systems
SyncroTESS.BuildMats is a "Business Intelligence" add-on. It complements rather than replaces traditional IT systems for order management, credit checking, accounting & finance, etc.

SyncroTESS' embedded Fleet Schedule Optimizer creates additional value (improved truck fleet productivity, customer service) over and above the operations efficiency resulting from manual planning & control methods. This additional value typically pays for the system well within 6 months.

SyncroTESS can be used for own trucks, contract hauliers, and spot market haulier resources.

In particular, SyncroTESS' role includes

  • calculating highly efficient job sequences and truck schedules
  • graphical schedule display for dispatcher approval or manual overwrite
  • real-time monitoring of fleet operations and job status
  • communicating job status data messages between trucks and dispatch center
  • automatically updating the order management system database

Fleet Schedule Optimizer
The power source of SyncroTESS' success is the embedded Fleet Schedule Optimizer. Its goal: calculating highly efficient job sequences and truck schedules meeting all customer service demands (delivery time windows, load spacing, special technical requirements, etc.).

The Optimizer is specifically designed with regard to building materials transportation and comes with dedicated rulebases for different type of operations: ready-mixed concrete, aggregate, asphalt, ... etc. It also provides extensive customization & localization capabilities. In particular, it accomodates:

  • pre-definable customer / order / job priorities
  • pre-definable pick-up and/or delivery time windows
  • customer / job specific arrival time tolerances
  • fixed and flexible load spacing
  • various technical job requirements
  • a variety of technical truck properties and capacity constraints
  • haulier priorities
  • anticipated plant wait times
  • special logic for pump mixers
  • special logic for STV's client managed sub-operations
  • etc ...

It has the ability to allocate trucks, on the fly, to different job rotations and even different loading plants - flexibly responding to the current overall situation in a given region or area. Its results are always subject to dispatcher's authorisation.

In the Day Planning and Fleet Sizing modules, the Optimizer produces fleet schedules covering an entire day. In the RealTimeDispatch module, the Optimizer dynamically produces new fleet schedules in response to every significant situation change, like order quantity changes, traffic jams, loading or unloading delays, etc.

The Fleet Schedule Optimizer uses advanced mathematical algorithms to simultaneously process all open jobs and all available trucks. Considering that there are even for a small operation (e.g. 50 trucks, 1 day) several millions feasable delivery schedules, these algorithms can be vastly superior to human reasoning. This is even more true considering the time pressure that dispatchers are typically exposed to.

Admittedly, even the Optimizer does not always find the excatly optimal solution. But optimized fleet schedules are so much better than human generated ones that SyncroTESS clients report cost benefits in the order of US$ 250,000 - US$ 1,000,000 per year.

Regional Truck Fleet Dispatch
Sharing haulage resources (owned trucks as well as contract hauliers) between multiple plants yields higher productivity as compared to single plant dispatch. Therefore, in addition to single plant dispatch, SyncroTESS can optimize job sequences and truck schedules across an entire region.

Each regional dispatch center typically covers

  • a distinct delivery area (city, rural, mixed)
  • with multiple pickup locations (plants, quarries, railyards, warehouses,...),
  • multiple delivery locations (construction sites, plants,...), and multiple truck depots (owned trucks, contract hauliers).

However, if centralized truck fleet dispatch is only an option for the future (to unleash yet more productivity), SyncroTESS has proven to deliver its benefits even in decentralized operations.

Your People and SyncroTESS
Once introduced into an organization, SyncroTESS Optimization is typically quickly accepted, because it helps a variety of people to achieve their goals more successfully.

The planner can more accurately asses the impact of tomorrow's workload on customer service, likely overtime, and other operational factors. He can run simulations to explore options (e.g. "what if we postpone part of certain orders to the subseqent day", or "what if we call-in another 3 trucks of a particular haulier", etc.). He can determine how to resolve - to the best interest of his company - the "customer service vs. cost efficiency" dilemma, subject to the then current market situation, truck availability, etc.

Dispatchers appreciate the significant workload reduction: Rather than deciding one by one about every single job assignment, SyncroTESS dispatchers just supervise the operations, attending to detail only in a few exceptional situations.

Order takers get to see "the big picture". Hence their ability to play a much more active customer service role, helping clients to work around delays, manage quantity changes on short notice, etc. Sometimes they even might be able to negotiate better delivery time windows for certain orders ...

Managers can run scenario simulations to explore the impact of business decisions: new plant locations, large customer orders, etc. And, naturally, they directly profit the from the improved bottom line ... ;-)

Financial Benefits
SyncroTESS schedule optimization, added-on to an existing order management system, empowers the delivery organisation to achieve

  • More transport volume with a given fleet size - equating to more business revenues with constant haulage costs, or
  • Less truck operating hours for a given transport volume - equating to substantial savings in direct costs and haulier payments

or any combination of the above.

This creates additional financial benefits. SyncroTESS users report annual operational cost savings in the order of

US$ 750,000.-

per year for a typical regional fleet of 100 trucks.

With the system being rather inexpensive, and roll-out of the standard system functionality rather swift, return-on-investment (pay-back) time is typically less than 6 months.