TCS Truck Load Optimization

Improve truck utilization, transportation management

Consumer packaged goods organizations globally are revamping their distributor management and supply chain processes to better manage disruptions with agility and become carbon neutral.

Even as cloud-based offerings integrated with multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) and distributor management systems (DMS) grow in popularity, challenges, including high transportation costs, and mismanagement of truck load and space due to lack of real-time insights, and other road transportation limitations persist. 

Current trends indicate organizing outbound shipment to help truck capacity optimization and applying strategies such as mixed integer linear programing (MILP) techniques and transporter allocation algorithm solutions can be cost-effective and help reduce carbon footprint. From procurement to delivery, incorporating enhanced time management and optimized execution are key factors that require critical analysis.

TCS’ Truck Load Optimization and Transporter Management system enabes improved truck utilization and transportation management by leveraging MILP techniques and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) for efficient distribution and reduced freight costs, besides giving a fillip to the carbon neutral journey. 

Overview

In today’s hyper-volatile market, supply chain dynamics play a determining role across industries. 

It is imperative for businesses to invest in smooth, predictable product flow from procurement to delivery with a concrete transportation planning in place. However, high transportation costs due to disintegrated and unstable supply chains, lack of real-time visibility into truck availability and load utilization, and sub-optimal third-party logistical (3PL) allocation driven by contractual obligations are some of the challenges that impede transport operations. This also results in increased carbon footprint and high execution time across the value chain.

TCS’ Truck Load Optimization (TLO) and Transporter Management System uses MILP, truck analytics, product mix, and transporter data to help centralize the transport planning process, provide a single pane of view into truck and transport operations, and reduce overall cost in transportation planning. TLO enables transporter planning based on monthly shipment forecast, 24-hour advance planning, and real-time load optimization. It also provides management solutions for optimal execution, bills and claims management, and truck order management.

With real-time qualitative and quantitative metrics scorecards and KPIs, TCS addresses service performance initiatives.

Solution

TCS TLO solution (see Figure 1) combines information on truck types, transporter data and product mix. 

It helps with truck load optimization by:

• Enabling monthly forecasting of number and types of trucks for better transportation planning

• Preparing trucks 24 hours ahead of schedule

• Optimizing run vehicle load in real time by weight and volume, thus helping save on transportation costs.

• Identifying limitations at product hierarchy level and type of packaging based on truck type

• Recommending filler stock keeping units (SKUs) to optimize truck utilization and product mix based on number of delivery destinations and truck type

• Prioritizing earliest reserved SKUs for optimization

It aids transporter management by:

• Simplifying transporter allocation

• Delivering reports and dashboards

• Enabling alerts and notifications

• Executing truck order

• Facilitating bills and claims management

It boosts transporter service performance by:

• Providing scorecards with qualitative and quantitative metrics to boost informed decision-making