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Bakery company Greggs has installed Paragon routeing and scheduling software, following a trial at its Manchester bakery, which helped reduce its fleet size by eight vehicles resulting in an estimated annual saving of £200,000.
The company, which specialises in sandwiches, pastries and cakes, currently operates 12 central bakeries, each of which supplies around 100 stores via its fleet of 250 vehicles.
Paul Duggan, national logistics project manager at Greggs, said: “Previously we delivered everything overnight, with products leaving the bakeries as soon as they emerged from the ovens at around 3am and reaching each store by 7am. As a result, such a tight time window demanded a very large fleet of trucks.”
The new software has been designed to reassess delivery patterns and develop a more cost effective distribution system.
The bakery group now delivers fresh produce overnight, while chilled and frozen products are distributed throughout the day.
Duggan added: “Not only is it [the software] able to handle all the different temperature zones we work with, it is also able to assess whether shops are being serviced by the right central bakery, helping us to improve utilisation.
“It has also improved our delivery reliability as we are able to ‘sense check’ any routes that drivers advise us are especially problematic.”
