Vehicle Routing Optimisation
We worked with Schweppes to build a powerful, easy to use tool to optimise their trucking routes across mainland Australia
Schweppes is a global leading, non-alcoholic drink manufacturer and distributor. Like many other distributors, they face the daunting challenge of managing multiple deliveries, with a limited number of trucks and hundreds of customer orders to fulfill, every single day. For Schweppes, Australia, this can be a logistical nightmare with over 100 trucks operating at any one time in order to meet their customers’ demand.
Discover how Biarri approached Schweppes challenge, and see how Biarri were able to create a tool to optimise the planning of delivery schedules.
Business Need
Schweppes distribution centres span across Australia, with the logistics team spending large part of their working week on planning delivery schedules and assigning deliveries accordingly. With the pressure of meeting demand, logistic planners would construct delivery routes through ‘old hand methods’ such as Excel and pen and paper. With a strong focus on customer service, Schweppes felt through their current planning methods, both planning and delivery routes to be inefficient and costly. In addition to inefficient routes, their current planning methods were prone to human error creating additional pressure on deliveries.
To ensure complex last-mile delivery requirements were met, the logistic team required a custom solution that was more than an off the shelf solution. Schweppes required a tool and platform that would improve efficiency and service levels, tailored to support Schweppes many subtle rules and considerations.
Our Approach
Biarri worked closely with Schweppes to identify what was required from a modern, world class logistical operational solution. Biarri applied a mathematical and analytical approach to showcase where improvements could be made through creating an efficient and optimised set of routes and automating and optimising the planning methods and processes. When we had proven that we could produce the optimal result for Schweppes’ vehicle routing we were able to rapidly build the tool.
On top of the Biarri Workbench we leveraged AWS services toolkit as part of the solution such as AWS EC2 to run the optimisation workloads, AWS S3 to store application information, AWS PostgreSQL RDS to manage the workload data tables, AWS EKS to ensure a highly available and scalable workload, and AWS Elasticache to queue and manage tasks.
The result was an easy to use, comprehensive vehicle routing solution that is based on Schweppes’ unique requirements. Our vehicle routing solution for Schweppes Australia was customised to suit their specific routing requirements, including optimising routes based on their customers’ limited delivery windows.
“We are very pleased with the work Biarri has done over the past year and know that our customer service has improved further and significant savings have been made. To outsource the optimisation of our fleet to specialists has been a very good business decision, leaving us to concentrate on increasing the efficiency of our transport and operations.”
Rob Aiken
Transport Manager, Schweppes
The Results
Through utilising Biarri’s routing tool, Schweppes saw considerable improvement across their whole supply chain operations. Schweppes was able to maintain daily delivery route planning across all mainland states. Equipped with a custom engine and interface that caters to the unique requirements and workflow, Schweppes achieved greater efficiency and service levels which included:
- Schweppes logistics team were now able to optimise their vehicle routing with a reduction in time and effort;
- Schweppes has been able to reduce kilometres travelled by 10%;
- Schweppes has been able to reduce fuel consumption and driver fatigue;
- Schweppes’ optimised vehicle routing now takes less time and effort and
- Reduced the fleet required to satisfy customer demand.
AWS Partner Network
Since partnering with AWS and joining the AWS Partner Network (APN), Biarri has been able to identify new opportunities to scale. Through leveraging AWS services, we have greater confidence in developing tools that align with our mathematical and analytical Biarri approach. AWS provides a platform that is not only quick but secure, giving our clients around the world assurance. Biarri will continue to acquire additional AWS data and analytics competencies, as we continue to increase our reach.
