TRANSPORT is often seen as a necessary evil by manufacturers, rather than a vital link in the supply chain. Companies, as a result, can sometimes overlook simple approaches to driving down the transport costs. one inexpensive way of doing this is through better management of the transport function via the use of computerised routing and scheduling systems. These systems enable companies to achieve immediate, measurable savings within a few months as well as improving customer service. A routing and scheduling system is a computer program designed to convert a list of customer orders into a delivery schedule. It does this by minimising the time and distance on the road and maximising the utilisation of the vehicles. It has been proven many times that such simple systems can save about 15-30 percent of resources in terms of time, distance, number of vehicles and cost. Any operation suing more than five vehicles can expect to save enough in the first year to recover its software investment.
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