Hello emaFirstName and welcome to the fifth edition of InSupport eq, the quarterly electronic newsletter just for our clients.  Each quarter we will report on items that we believe will be of interest to you: development news; our most recent experiences on-site “at the coal face”; help desk highlights; and any other news.   If there is something you'd like to read in future editions please provide feedback. Of course, if you are not interested in being included in our circulation list, please unsubscribe where indicated right at the bottom of this email.

Scott Dowell
Operations Manager

Factory Gate Pricing is a concept that has been introduced by the two major supermarket chains, whereby the product is either delivered direct to DC by the manufacturer or collected by the retailer at the factory, rather than the manufacturer delivering directly to store.  The intention of the concept is that the manufacturer adjusts their product price to take into account the reduction in transport costs - the new price being the “factory gate” price.

The problem with this policy that many of our manufacturing clients face is that while they still need to cover the same geographic area, they no longer deliver to the major supermarkets, so their volume and number of drops are significantly reduced; therefore, the cost to serve the remaining customers increases. 

This is also a problem for our 3PL/4PL clients, who not only face the prospect of losing their bread and

butter, but also get asked by a desperate manufacturer why transport costs have not gone down, despite the loss in volume.

In previous articles we have mentioned that Transit can help by conducting a demand smoothing exercise, but the loss of the large-volume retail stores may also mean that the best fleet for an operation changes significantly.  Odyssey is designed to maximise utilisation and is an excellent tool to help in a re-configuration exercise.

The retail transport providers may have the chance to pick up some backhaul work and reduce their dead running, but many of you may not be aware that standard “Dynamo” can schedule deliveries and collections in a single schedule.  It also includes options to manage the collections, such as performing the collections after all of the deliveries are completed, so the collections don’t get in the way of unloading the deliveries.

If you are feeling the impact of factory gate pricing, please don’t hesitate to contact us.  We may be able to help ease the pain, whether through a demand smoothing or fleet configuration exercise, or just some help managing collections.

With the upgrade to MapInfo data as the basis of our GIS, we are relying on our clients to provide feedback, particularly if you encounter any missing streets.

We understand that some of our clients are delivering to very new suburbs and may not expect to find the street in the system; however, any and all information can help to improve the GIS as quickly as possible.

If you encounter a missing street in the GIS, there are a couple of steps to undertake prior to reporting the details to our Help Desk: firstly, check the

spelling, the street type and locality – the top suggestions in the Address editor are based primarily on those; secondly, check to see whether the street is displayed on an existing street directory page – either in Odyssey or in the actual street directory given to drivers (even better if you are able to provide an Ausway map reference).

Once you have that information and you still can’t geocode automatically to street level, please email the missing street and the results of your investigation to Client Support (clientsupport@transit.com.au). We will then double-check your findings and perhaps be able to advise a workaround, before forwarding that information to MapInfo for inclusion in the next GIS update.

Please note that MapInfo uses the official full street name, which can sometimes vary from the local name. This can often be the case with hyphenated street names, eg: Frankston-Dandenong Road.

Most of you will have already met him; but for those who haven’t, Daryl Kemp has recently joined Transit as our new Account Manager. Daryl is a former Transport Manager who used Odyssey for daily operational schedules.

The Account Manager position is a new role at Transit, with Daryl being responsible for spending time on-site with all of our operational users to be as pro-active as possible to improve our product and service.

Daryl’s current project is to ensure that none of our users need to spend more than 30 minutes running a schedule, including modification time. Daryl has a great deal of experience with many of the operational issues that are faced on a daily basis and the ways in which Odyssey can help.

There are many reasons why you might spend more time than you should modifying your schedules but, whatever the reason for a change, there will often be a parameter or data change that can be made so that the schedule comes out the way you want.

The quality of your schedules may be suffering from inaccurate geocoding, incorrect use of parameters or inaccurate times and distances. Daryl can help with all of these issues.

As mentioned previously, we are constantly working to improve our time and distance and geocoding tools, but without detailed feedback we can’t improve the product. Daryl will be asking for this feedback whenever he is on-site and we can’t encourage you strongly enough to take advantage of this. There should never be any reason to throw away the Odyssey schedules and build them manually.

If you are an interstate user and you haven’t had a visit from Daryl yet, please be patient as he works his way across the country; but if you have any urgent issues, please don’t hesitate to contact him at the office.