Aptean Routing and Scheduling Overview

Aptean

Aptean Routing and Scheduling Overview

Calidus TMS and Paragon - various

21st May 2024 - 1.0
Reference: OVERVIEW

System Architecture

Systems:

• Aptean TMS Calidus Edition
• Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition
• Aptean Portal
  • TMS
  • TTM
  • Gateway
• Aptean Proof of Delivery
  • FlexiPOD
  • Track My Driver
• Aptean TMS Calidus Edition – Middle Mile Scanning (MCS)

Modules:

• Order Management
• EDI (import and export)
• Fixed Routes/Scheduling Engine (e.g. trunks)
• Fixed Schedules (e.g. Milk Runs)
• Planning, including:
  • Routing & Scheduling, including optimisation, resource management.
  • Manual planning
  • Resourcing
  • Tendering (3rd-party Carriers)
  • Reporting – e.g. KPI/PvA
  • Vehicle Tracking (through 3rd-party Vehicle Tracking links)
• Proof of Delivery – execution, tracking boards
• Customer Portal, including order entry/upload (TMS), track and trace (TTM)
• Customer Track and Trace self-service (Track My Driver and Gateway)
• Reporting, including extracts, formal reports (operational), customised extracts, scheduled BI extracts
• Finance - trip cost and order revenue generation from rate cards, invoicing

TMS vs Planning vs Both‎

Aptean recommends Aptean Routing and Execution plus Aptean TMS for full system functionality across the whole process set of an organisation.

Overview of Functionality

Aptean Routing & Scheduling and POD:

• Orders (high level volumes, not details)
• Planning
• Resource Management
• Execution - FlexiPOD, POD note
• Tracking - Track My Driver, Boards
• Vehicle Tracking
• Debrief - actual versus plan, reporting, dashboards, trip costs.

Aptean TMS Calidus Edition:

• Single point of data, regardless of source or how it is executed.
• Single process for order and trip lifecycles, regardless of source or how it is executed. In other words, when is planning, execution, middle mile, final mile, etc), automatically generating tasks for and importing tasks from other systems (such as Aptean Routing and Scheduling, Aptean POD, other third-party systems as required).
• Order well - much more detailed. Extensible, down to items and contents.
• Order generation – fixed schedules, milk runs, etc.
• Locations - reusable locations for variety of purposes (e.g. Depot, customer locations), with configuration that affects how jobs are planned or executed at a location level. Not just an address against an order.
• Order Integration - order well from many different inputs, in different formats
• Fixed routes - Middle-mile planning to outbase/RDC/Delivering depot
• Middle mile execution - scanning into and out of depots, palletisation, etc
• Manual or Overflow planning - 3rd party carrier
• Resource management - 1st/3rd party (known resources), 3rd party manual entry of resources.
• 3rd-party carrier process - tendering, acceptance, carrier invoicing, comparison, carrier restrictions.
• Finance - order revenue, trip costs, invoicing
• Operational documents (e.g. item labels, paper-based loading sheets, driver notes, manifests, etc)
• Pushed export back to system source, can be multiple, segregated based on source system.
• Single point of BI export regardless of source or how it was executed.

Order Import and Handling‎

Order Import

Orders may be imported through

• EDI (flat-file SFTP or webservice OAUTH endpoint) in Aptean TripOrder XML format.
• Manual CSV upload (configurable formats) by CTMS users.
• Manual CSV upload (configurable format) by customers/clients.
• Manual entry.
• Fixed Schedule or Order Templates by CTMS users for milk runs.

Order Handling

Orders consist of multiple characteristics, including a type and a start and end point. For collections (OOH/SME), Aptean TMS Calidus Edition (TMS) and Aptean Routing and Scheduling Paragon Edition (Paragon) will plan the order into the required depot.

TMS may then use fixed routes to plan the order from the origin depot through any required cross-dock routes and depot to regional distribution centre (RDC) – i.e. the radial routes. These routes will obey cut-offs and use location postal regions to zone orders and apply regional responsibility to depots to route to the correct RDC.

TMS will pass the orders through to regional planning projects for each depot and defined schedule (a planning schedule) to Aptean Routing and Scheduling Paragon Edition (Paragon). This is on-demand and updated near real time after orders are trunk-planned

Paragon will route plan and optimise first mile collection routes through defined rules controlled by CTMS planners for own-fleet. Once planning is complete, routes are frozen and exported back to TMS, which makes them available for onward execution.

Orders which do not make the plan for own-fleet carriers are left unscheduled or part-scheduled and can then be planned for 3rd-party carriers (covered in more detail under question B-3.2 Subcontractor Management.

Aptean TMS is not expecting to have knowledge of or to be planning the final mile routes. However, if the order’s destination location is a final destination address, then this may also be planned through Paragon from the RDC to final destination.

Resourcing

Acceptance of these generated trips (collection, trunk/radial, delivery) allows the trips to be resourced (vehicle, driver).

Resource for own-fleet is managed through Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition Resource Manager.

Resources allocated to own-fleet routes for final delivery are automatically resourced in Aptean TMS Calidus Edition.

Radial/Trunk routes (and other milk runs, supplier collections, etc) will be assigned a carrier (3rd-party or own fleet) when generated. 3rd-party carriers can be resourced as per strong own-fleet rules or more generally (free-text).

Execution

Once trips are accepted, these are passed out to the Aptean Proof of Delivery system, which executes delivery or collection as part of the trip. Starting the trip automatically shows trips as en-route and begins the tracking process. Track and trace is enabled through the Aptean POD system and can be aided by 3rd-party tracking systems such as WEBFLEET.

Aptean POD will collect tracking and debrief information and can extend to data capture of forms at point of collection/delivery and other extended configurable functionality.

Sign on glass is fully supported and on completion of the job, Calidus TMS is debriefed with departure/arrival time, quantity/item variations and success/failure of the job, which automatically completes the order in the order well.

Finance

Each customer may have a rate cards, detailing charges, types (distance, time, unit, etc), breakpoints, fixed charges, etc. Geographical restrictions are typically enabled to generate different rates/charges for different areas of the country.

The customer account controls the method of charge generation, type, consolidation, invoice production (point of invoice generation), method (planned or actual), etc. When an order is created, updated or debriefed, order revenue is generated from the order characteristics and the rate card.

Each carrier may have a rate card and settings, detailing similar characteristics, to generate trip costs, created and updated as trips are complete. Trip costs can be applied back as charges against order revenue.

Invoice lines are automatically generated as per account rules, and invoices can be printed, posted or emailed.

Modelling, Planning and Route Optimisation‎

Aptean Routing and Scheduling – Paragon Edition

For your planned use of Paragon, we would provide a number of Paragon Planning Systems for operational and strategic planning use.

Paragon takes in details of the orders to be delivered/collected, the transport resources available, and general information such as shift details, break requirements, drop times and site details. Using a highly developed algorithm designed specifically for optimising road-based transport operations, the Paragon software calculates the most effective delivery and collection sequences that meet promised time windows, allocates loads to appropriate vehicles and drivers, and uses digital mapping to calculate road-based journey times and distances.

The Paragon software is also highly configurable, with many parameters that make it capable of handling the wide range of transport constraints that can arise. As a result, users come from all stages in the supply chain – manufacturing, wholesale, retail, parcels/mail and home delivery – and span vertical sectors that include the building supplies, food and drink, Hi-Tech goods, furniture, clothing, pharmaceutical and healthcare, waste management, service management, automotive and petrochemical industries.

Paragon includes Windows drop down menu control, data editors, automatic location geocoding, times and distance calculations, automatic routing and scheduling, interactive graphics facilities for modifying routes, interactive time vehicle utilisation bar chart and reporting facilities.

Paragon also caters for operations involving multi drop or single drop trips, multi trip routes, multi day routes, daily or weekly scheduling, deliveries and collections, multiple driver’s shifts, order priority, delivery time constraints, vehicle access constraints, driver’s shift details and drivers’ hour’s regulations.

When used as a strategic planning system Paragon would enable you to model the route planning for your existing and any potential future depot network. You could readily model alternative scenarios such as validating fixed routes, defining vehicle fleet types, understanding the effect of new customers on the existing operation and assessing what effect offering differing time windows may have.

Integrated Fleets Paragon enables a single planner to schedule routes for multiple depots with either fixed or flexible boundaries, taking into account resource availability at each depot. Alternatively orders can be constrained to a particular depot based on product availability.

Paragon's Integrated Fleets enables vehicles and drivers at multiple sites to be treated as a single integrated transport resource, so that movements from different locations can be combined into efficient routes that reduce overall empty running.

This generates efficient routes which increases asset utilisation, improves productivity and reduces empty mileage.

Paragon Strategic and Tactical Use

Many of our clients are successfully using Paragon for Strategic as well as operational planning.

When used as a strategic planning system Paragon would enable you to model the route planning for your existing depot. You could readily model alternative scenarios such as validating fixed routes, defining vehicle fleet types, understanding the effect of new delivery locations on the existing operation and assessing what effect offering differing time windows may have.

Some of the key facilities that are available in our software that will help address strategic use requirements include:

• the ability to compare the cost of alternative scenarios for example total route cost, cost per drop, and cost per mile
• the capability to hold a large number of different scenarios and their results, and the ability to switch between them and if necessary combine delivery requirements
• the ability to import and validate fixed routes
• planning multiple trips per vehicle per day
• handling daily and weekly schedules
• the interactive manipulation of routes and call details
• an interactive bar chart display showing the use of vehicles or drivers over the day or period
• the ability to universally adjust all time windows to test the effect of tighter or slacker constraints
• the ability to define that an order will not be available for despatch until a particular time, or similarly that a collection must be brought back to the depot by a particular time
• user defined Macros, Functions and Filters allow easy manipulation of single or multiple customer and call details.

Local Depot Access

In Multi User deployments we can provide additional Paragon Multi User Workbenches for local depot users to enable multiple users to review each schedule simultaneously.

The benefits of utilising additional Workbenches include:

• Enables several people to view & change the plan
• Retains the benefit of local involvement
• Plan can be changed based on local circumstances
• Transport resources allocated at branch level; overall transport optimisation carried out centrally
• Provides visibility of the transport plan to related departments
  • Warehouse, customer services and distribution management
• More than one planner can review the schedules before sign-off – routes released to warehouse earlier

Enhanced Mapping

You may also include the following enhanced mapping options to provide increased planning accuracy.

INRIX Average Road Speed Data

This option provides the average road speed information on major roads. This average speed data has been derived by detailed analysis of the average speeds achieved by goods vehicles on the road network. This is based on data provided by INRIX, and provides better estimates of journey times for the roads where the average speed information is available.

This enables the mapping within Paragon to provide accurate journey travel time and distance estimates allowing for the regional and local variation in the road network.

Use of this speed data would help improve the accuracy of your planning and help reduce the time you may need to calibrate the road speeds for use within Paragon.

HERE GB Street Level Mapping Detail

We are able to supply full street level map data sourced from HERE use with our Paragon routing and scheduling system.

Combining this data with sophisticated routing logic enables the Paragon system to be used for automatic routing and scheduling at street level detail, taking account of drive restriction information (DRI) including:

• One-way streets
• No entry
• No left turn /no right turn
• Must turn left / must turn right.

In addition, the street level map displays enable the user to picture the day’s routes and schedules at a high degree of accuracy. The overall schedule is produced using times and distances planned to the nearest second and metre.

Truck Attribute Data

As an option we can also provide Truck Attribute Data for the HERE GB Street Level Map above. This enhances the detail of the map further by including vehicle Height, Width, Weight, Length (HWWL) Truck Attribute Data.

By using Truck Attribute Data with your Paragon routing and scheduling software, you can more easily create achievable transport plans that avoid truck restrictions such as low bridges, or roads where weight restrictions apply. The route optimisation plan will automatically calculate transport plans that prevent detours, reducing mileage and streamlining the creation of cost effective, feasible transport plans.

Fixed Route Planning

Fixed Route Templates

• Day of the week
• Carrier
• Cut-offs
• Cross-dock points
• Zones

Delivering Depot Selection

• From location planning regions
• From depot assignment to planning regions

Scheduling Engine

• Takes the orders, assesses the delivering depot, uses the fixed routes to generate trunk trips between depots to get to the final delivering depot (RDC).
• This may generate multiple trips between multiple depots to get to the destination depot.