Hello and welcome to the fifth edition of InTransit eq, the newsletter that will be “ e ”-mailed you on a “ q ”-uarterly basis. We try to include articles that appeal to our clients and/or our prospects and other friends in the industry.

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Nicola Williams
Managing Director

Prior to the implementation of Odyssey , PFD Food Services scheduled manually within areas.  Drivers performed similar runs day in day out and the schedulers struggled to cope with changes in volume and customer ordering patterns. 

PFD have built their business on outstanding customer service from high quality drivers who pick-from-truck.  However this strong customer service reputation also means that expansion is difficult as changes to established runs are a long and laborious process. 

Some major new contracts and a new depot encouraged PFD to look for a scheduling system to help them cope with the additional workload.   They needed a system that would enable them to grow without reducing their service offerings. 

After evaluating a number of systems available in Australia, they chose Transit Odyssey . 

Odyssey has significantly reduced scheduling time for PFD and has allowed them to realise benefits from reduced paperwork.  The interface between Odyssey and their Warehouse Management System means driver manifests and picking sheets print in sequence and important single-pick orders are highlighted.  The interfacing between their systems also means that while customer cut-offs need to be adhered to rigorously they can also be more generous. 

Drivers often find the change to electronic scheduling difficult to cope with and PFD managed this issue well. They used the reports from Odyssey to implement a feedback loop.  Drivers were able to voice their concerns and the scheduler was able to monitor the planned versus actual schedules. 

In short, the management, the customer service staff, the warehouse staff, the transport staff and the drivers worked together to produce a solution that works.

PFD reaped the most benefits by using the implementation of Odyssey as a catalyst for cultural change.

Our Administration team, Nerida Haycock and Anne Boudeville, help our clients with a whole range of answers - from “Can I have a new reply code?” to “How much was I supposed to pay for that invoice?” to “I've lost my dongle, what do I do?”

Although Nerida Haycock is usually the first person you speak to when you ring Transit, reception is the smallest part of her job.  Nerida is our Admin Officer, and has come from a long-standing Federal Government administrative position, via veterinary nursing!  Nerida provides support to all areas of Transit – whether it be chasing up installation forms, keeping track of all the licences, logging help desk calls, assisting on consulting projects, liaising with potential A to B clients (our time and distance software), organising our User Group Meetings, or managing office procurement. 

Nerida is very versatile and enjoys the variety that her position provides.

Anne Boudeville is our Finance and HR Officer.  Besides taking care of the needs of staff here, Anne also helps with recruitment of new staff and prepares BAS, PAYG and payroll tax when required.

Clients may notice that the Quote Confirmation signed at the commencement of every project is addressed to Anne. This is to help Anne monitor the budget of a project throughout its duration, as well as invoicing at the end of the month. 

After completing her university studies in commerce, Anne worked as a PA at a government office.  “Coming from a large-office environment to Transit is certainly a breath of fresh air.  Clients feel comfortable enough to contact me should they have any questions with their invoices.  With me you will definitely be attended by a person, not a machine that says, ‘Press 1'”, she laughs!

Part 2 - Expose Hidden Business Rules

In the last article we started by defining “baseline” and talked a little about the importance of a baseline in any review of transport logistics.  In particular, calibrating the model so that it reflects the effects of operational variables unique to each particular operation.  Now we go on to another important aspect of creating a baseline – capturing the operational information that is not documented.

For each operation that we have encountered there are two different types of business rules – Explicit and Implicit.  The explicit rules are nice and easy to see and are well documented: “our trucks are 12 tonne capacity”, “our depot opens at 5am” etc.  The implicit rules are the ones that “everyone knows” but are not written down: “Bill won't accept deliveries before 10am”, “Brian does heaps of business with us and gets his delivery first” etc.

These hidden business rules can be every bit as important as the explicit rules – often more so.  If you don't expose these rules there is the possibility that the optimised schedules you produce may not be implement-able and therefore will not be correctly costed!  Odyssey can be made to conform to many business rules (even the exotic ones) but it is vital that they are recognised and exposed early in the modelling process so that realistic results can be taken from the later modelling.

In an operational environment hidden business rules may be the basis on which staff (correctly) declare that the optimised schedules are unrealistic.  If the hidden issues are not identified early then it is unlikely that they will be unearthed in the process of optimised schedule acceptance.  Resistance to optimised schedules will be non-specific: “travel times are unrealistic…”, “a driver couldn't possibly do that…” etc. but they will all be outcomes from not including some rule or body of work that is being done currently and was not reflected in the baseline model you made.

Next edition, we tackle like-with-like comparison….

Can I import my schedule into Excel easily?

Many users have expressed a desire to analyse their schedules using the tools provided by Microsoft Excel. In previous versions of Transit, it was possible to export the schedule in Excel format, but the capabilities of this export were fairly limited.

To address this issue in Odyssey, a new feature has been introduced: Copy Entire Grid . This option is available when you right click on any of the grids in the system including the customers editor, the orders editor and the schedule manager.

Once the content of the grid has been copied, it can be pasted into any application including Excel and Word.

Because the data is copied directly from the grid, only those columns that you have chosen to show are included and they are copied in the order you arranged.

Why don't I automatically get the latest Odyssey?

Our general policy on releases is that clients are only given updates to their system on two grounds:

1.      There is a bug in their current system.

a.  This is called an Interim Build
b.  Testing is limited to additional features in the build and the particular bugs addressed
c. Testing takes at least a week (testing for operational installations are significantly more      rigorous than for a planning/modelling installations)
d.  This allows for rapid turn-around on problems

2.      It is their annual update.

a.  This is called a Master Build (or Roll-up Build)
b.  Changes in previous Interim Builds are rolled-up to the Master Build
c   Significant change in functionality and version number
d.  Exhaustive testing to make sure all clients are on a common, stable version
e.  Allows all the improvements and features developed for other implementations to be      shared by all clients