Wincanton achieve constantly improving level of service with Optrak

Wincanton is a European leader in the design and delivery of advanced supply chain solutions. Wincanton operates a contract on behalf of a major petroleum company to deliver packed goods such as cans of oil to garage forecourts and petrol stations, and bulk lubricants to car workshops, dealerships and big manufacturing plants.

Wincanton pioneered the use of Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC) vehicles that are able to deliver both bulk liquid and packed goods which had improved vehicle utilisation. Wincanton used the vehicle routing package, Optrak, for a series of strategic supply chain modelling projects.

Strategic planning reveals the key to substantially reducing costs

Wincanton carried out a major strategic analysis that looked at all aspects of the distribution. Dean Hardy, Senior Planner used Optrak for supply chain modelling, "We are constantly looking at new ways of doing things, to see if we can improve our service standards and to reduce costs. Optrak is used to carry out a number of 'what if?' scenarios, for example, what if we change the fleet mix or location? This allows us to adapt the fleet as demand patterns change over time."

One of the key findings was that a low drop density combined with varying order volumes was driving vehicle utilisation down to as little as 20%. Service requirements were being met, but with high inter-drop distances, efficiency was being sacrificed.

It became clear that for packed goods, unless a bulk order was also being sent to the same customer or geographic region, it wasn’t cost effective to deliver it using the in-house fleet. Further analysis showed that by moving the majority of packed goods onto carriers it would free up the fleet, save money and reduce the amount of time required for transport planning.

Wincanton turned to Optrak to integrate the use of carriers into the main routing decision making. A number of changes were made to the software to assist the planner and maintain the high level of planning automation. Wincanton now maintains up to date carrier pricing within Optrak. Whilst rates and postal areas change over time, it is a simple process to update this data.

After a period of further analysis to confirm that the strategic findings were operationally feasible, the use of carriers was introduced. Ben Young, General Manager commented, "Alongside other changes determined from the strategic project, the introduction of carriers into our supply chain has resulted in a big increase in fleet utilisation directly leading to major savings."

He continues, "Strategic modelling is a key part of our ability to deliver a constantly improving level of service to our clients. Using Optrak, we have been able to determine how to reduce our vehicle fleet by over 50% whilst still hitting our service targets. We appreciate its value as both a strategic and operational tool."

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