Lubricating vehicle routing

Fuchs Lubricants (UK) wanted to improve customer service levels and reduce their delivery costs measured in pence per litre (PPL).

The entire route and load planning process has now been automated using the Optrak vehicle routing package. It interfaces with Fuchs' SAP software and orders are downloaded directly to Optrak. The scheduler uses Optrak to build the most efficient set of routes that meet customer service requirements. Optrak automatically uses the available drivers and vehicles in the most efficient way and maintains checks on the grades and pumping order thus eliminating any possibly of cross grade contamination.

Specific benefits have been benchmarked:

• Tanker capacity utilisation has increased by 6%.
• The number of 'no actions' has gone up by 4%. This is where Optrak allocates an order to a specific tanker/compartment so that the grade can be pumped into the compartment with no pre-preparation.
• Drain only actions have risen by 7%.
• Drain and flush actions are down by over 4%.
• Costly actions such as where the compartment needs to be washed out, cleaned and dried are down by 13%.

Darren Bourne, Fuchs Distribution Manager said, 'The lubricants market poses special challenges for a vehicle routing system. Within 3 months of installation we were able to reduce the time between when an order is placed and delivered significantly. We are now achieving our best delivery performance ever for the company and its customers.'