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Hello and welcome to
the second edition of InTransit eq, the
newsletter that we will “e”-mail you
on a “q”-uarterly basis. The response
from our clients, prospective clients and other
friends to our first edition was very positive and
a big “thanks!” to those of you who
offered helpful ideas for future editions.
As we’d like you to read InTransit
eq from top to bottom each quarter, please provide
feedback
on the articles we’ve included in this edition
and what you’d like to read about in future
editions. If you are not interested in being included
in our circulation list, please unsubscribe where
indicated right at the bottom of this email.
Nicola Williams
Managing Director |
| BHP
Steel Select Transit for Trial |
In order to meet the ever-increasing demands
of their customers in an expanding business,
BHP Steel decided they needed to start using
routing and scheduling software.
Following an extensive review of
10 potential suppliers, BHP Steel has selected
Transit Odyssey for a trial at their
Western Port site in Melbourne.
Tracy Shaw, the project leader, said that
they selected Transit because “it
met most of our criteria, and the ease of
implementation and user-friendliness of Transit
stacked up better than the competition. Being
an Australian company was also a big advantage,
because of the local support and ability to
change the system if necessary.
We also felt Transit’s total
price offering was very competitive in terms
of the up-front cost and ongoing maintenance
fees.” |
BHP Steel has been using Transit
Odyssey operationally since early
April this year to schedule steel coils
from their manufacturing plant in Westernport
to the service centres (where they are further
processed) or direct to end customers.
Tracy said that there are two main things
they want to achieve with Transit:
the first is to reduce the scheduling time,
which would free up the schedulers to do
other tasks and also enable them to schedule
later in the day; and the second is to improve
their vehicle utilisation.
So far, it has reduced the scheduling time
considerably. Their gut feeling is that
the Transit schedules are also
more efficient, but are still analysing
the “before” and “after”
data to discover the extent of the savings.
The trial will not be complete until they
integrate the scheduling of coils from individual
warehouses at Westernport and from service
centres, to end customers, for which they
will utilise Transit’s “Pick-up
and deliver” functionality, due to
commence shortly.
To read more please download our PDF document
on our website located HERE.
Nicola
Williams
Managing Director |
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| The
Faces of Transit |
Part
1 - The Implemenation Team
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Luke Bourchier |
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Scott Dowell |
Software companies are often seen as product providers,
who only maintain contact until the implementation
is complete, rather than service providers, who
are there for the whole solution.
At Transit, we believe it’s
important to maintain a close relationship with
our clients from the pre-sale stage right up until
the day they no longer require our software.
Luke Bourchier is the primary point of contact for
all prospective clients until the Feasibility Study
commences (the first stage of a Transit implementation).
Luke joined Transit in early 2002 with
6 years of operational experience in the distribution
of bulk fuels at Mobil, from roles such as Inventory
Manager, Distribution Analyst and Fleet Supervisor.
Scott Dowell becomes involved during the Feasibility
Study and conducts most of the modelling and analysis.
Scott joined Transit in 1999, just prior
to completing his Diploma of Software Development,
and is in charge of Help Desk support, training
and quality assurance. |
With a wealth of real operational experience, Scott
is also responsible for implementations including
the customised training and hand-holding new users.
Sam Ousley does the initial installation and training,
and is the primary contact on our Help Desk. Sam
joined Transit in early 2001 while completing
her Bachelor of Business (Business Information Systems).
Our clients usually meet Damian Scott for the first
time when the implementation commences. Damian joined
Transit in 2000, after working for Australia
Post in state and national logistics operations
for 12 years. Damian used Transit at Post
for transport reviews and national modelling, and
was responsible for training the other Post Transit
users.
At the end of the implementation, Scott, Sam, Damian
or myself are appointed as the Account Manager,
so that the personal relationship is maintained
throughout our business relationship.
Nicola Williams
Managing Director |
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| Odyssey’s
Drag-on Meal Break |
Transit has always had some basic meal-break functionality
that allowed schedulers to be confident that drivers
could have a suitable break and still meet the customer
delivery windows.
In response to requests from our clients who have
asked for explicit meal breaks that show up in the
duty boards, Odyssey now delivers that ability.
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Since our system is designed for national and
international use across several industries, it
would not be possible for us to make the system
automatically allocate driver breaks since there
are too many regimes and legislations to account
for. Instead, we have made it easy for the scheduler
to nominate where meal breaks should be.
In Odyssey’s “Schedule Manager”
the scheduler can now drag a break from the resource
menu and drop it in a duty where he believes it
is most appropriate. The number and length of
breaks is at the user’s discretion and with
a quick recalculation the entire schedule is ready
to go.
To view an enlarged screen capture from Odyssey
showing this functionality, click HERE
Damian
Scott
Operations Director |
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| FAQ'S |
| Who uses Transit?
There are over 60 current Transit
licences around Australia, in 25 different operations
and almost 100 active Transit users.
Of these 25 operations, 32% have been using Transit
to schedule their transport for 10 or more years,
20% for between 5 and 10 years and 52% of these
operations have starting using Transit
in the past 3 years.
Even though just over half of these operations
(60%) are in the food and beverage industry, Transit
is currently used in a variety of other industries
as well - including courier, paper, tobacco, steel
and money. Interestingly, 50% of the top 10 manufacturers
of food, beverage and tobacco products, in terms
of their net profit after tax (according to a
recent BRW report), use Transit, and
a further 20% have used Transit’s
consulting services.
Who uses Transit? Companies currently
saving 15-25% of their transport costs!
Why use Transit when the ERP/warehouse/supply
chain software packages offer transport scheduling?
The shortest answer is optimisation versus scheduling.
The difference stems from the fact that Transit
is developed with existing clients and is designed
to minimise the cost of transport operations (optimisation),
whilst the all-in-one (AIO) systems offer transport
management as an accessory (scheduling).
With AIO vendors offering increased transport
planning (even some degree of optimisation) optimisation
is not the only difference. Differences exist
in algorithms, constraints, geographic information,
fleet bias, what-if modelling and customisation-ability.
Fundamentally, the difference is between a specialist
and a generalist approach to transport planning.
Transit has always been a transport system
while the AIO systems have their origin in financial/accounting
or warehouse/manufacturing systems. There is always
scope for a specialist vendor to offer more functionality,
particularly when the operations of transport/distribution
divisions are markedly different to the rest of
the business.
To read more download our PDF file from our website
HERE. |
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