Simplifying Truck Scheduling and Routing

Expertek Systems rolls out solution to automate dispatch planning for companies with small, midsize fleets

Expertek Systems rolls out solution to automate dispatch planning for companies with small, midsize fleets

Marlborough, MA — May 4, 2004 — Expertek Systems, a supplier of products and services for the wholesale distribution market, has rolled out RoadWizard, a software product designed to simplify dispatch planning for companies with small to midsize fleets with the goals of helping customers reduce transportation costs, increase driver efficiency and improve customer service.

According to Expertek, RoadWizard is designed to automate delivery scheduling, dispatching and route optimization using customer data directly from a company's business system. The software enables a warehouse manager to schedule delivery routes as soon as orders are picked from the business system.

Mike Ross, vice president of operations at Aristocraft Supply, said that the solution has helped the company significantly reduce the time required for delivery scheduling.

"To manually determine the delivery schedule for each truck would usually take us at least 2 hours per day to organize the data and set up the routes," Ross said. "Then we would have to leave the actual delivery schedule and route up to the drivers. The experienced drivers were fine, but when we had new drivers, we never would know how efficient they were in driving or where they were at any time. The entire process of scheduling has been reduced to 15 minutes a day."

Features in the solution include a visual map of a company's deliveries by truck, enabling planners to make informed decisions about which truck will deliver what orders where and when.

The solution integrates with Microsoft MapPoint to provide driving directions and maps and estimated times and distances for each leg of a given truck's journey, giving companies better control over their delivery fleets, Expertek said. The printable and automatically generated maps feature a colored route line that simplifies getting to the destination, the provider said.

In addition, an electronic street directory can be used to resolve misspellings and addressing errors from orders within a company's business system. These problems get resolved before the trucks leave the warehouse so that drivers stay on schedule to meet customer requirements, Expertek said.

Ken Mostello, president of Expertek Systems, said that to remain competitive, distributors will need to advance beyond just having a solid enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. "They will have to automate their warehouse, shipping, and transport processes," he said.

Mostello added that RoadWizard includes tools that will allow management to be more cognizant of what happens when the company's trucks leave the loading docks. "Knowing where every truck is and when every truck will deliver product to your customers will give you a level of service that your competitors cannot match," he asserted.

Expertek said that RoadWizard can run both standalone or integrated with NxTrend SX.enterprise, Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, FACTS and other enterprise resource planning systems, allowing a company to automate the process of retrieving orders from its business system for scheduling, reducing time spent by the dispatcher.

The solution is available immediately, and Expertek said that pricing for RoadWizard is based on the number of trucks that a company wants to schedule.

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