CASE STUDY
Industry: Timber
Product: Certified sawn products across a variety of industries
“We’re doing a high percentage of the work in a fraction of the time.”
– Group Logistics Manager, BSW Timber
Challenges:
» Manual route planning with no visibility across teams
» No centralised planning capabilities and inefficient routes
» Could not direct routing for third-party logistics drivers
Results:
» Significantly improved in route planning time
» Reduced administrative time and workload
» Better utilisation of resources
The Challenge:
BSW Timber, the UK’s largest timber company, manufactures and supplies a wide range of sawn products for an array of industries, such as pallet manufacturing, fencing, construction, landscaping, and decking.
With a third-party fleet size of well over 200 trucks, seven sawmills and multiple distribution centres, BSW has a complex operation. The company does its own sawmilling and manufacturing, so each depot needs different truck sizes and capacities. This adds another level of intricacy to their routing and scheduling operations.
Routing and planning were decentralised, and each sawmill site had its own traffic planners. Due to manual routing capabilities and no visibility, delivery trucks would often pass one another on delivery routes. BSW initially had staff members located at all sites trying to manage the routing.
According to the Group Logistics Manager: “The departments took on a few extra responsibilities on top of the main mill dispatches from some of the new ports that sales are generated from. When we first started to look at centralised planning, the dispatch function was across multiple site desks.”
“Before Aptean Routing & Scheduling, the delivery planning operation was not joined up. We were looking at ways to be innovate in our approach and reduce the number of vehicles we were utilising per day, to help keep drivers within the group and keep them moving between sites,” the Group Logistics Manager states.
The company needed a solution to enable more efficient, planned delivery operations.
The Solution:
After a thorough research and vetting process, BSW chose Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition. The software immediately helped streamline and optimise inefficient processes, improve route planning capabilities, and reduce time-intensive manual administration.
The Result:
The software gave BSW Timber complete visibility across the operation. The team noted that Aptean Routing & Scheduling reduced planning time almost immediately. The Group Logistics Manager says, “We saw the solution impacting almost all our results by a meaningful degree such that we are able to see real cost/time savings as a result. We have reduced our time planning deliveries significantly which allows the team to focus more time with the actual deliveries and more time allocated to ensuring customer delivery satisfaction.”
Since implementation, BSW has also reduced the numbers of resources engaged in the planning operation.
As the Group Logistics Manager says, “It’s about aligning the right people’s skills and expertise to the right tasks. It’s a way to improve productivity and optimise our resources to the best potential. While it’s still early days, we continue to see improvements and an increasing number of benefits since implementing this new system into our operation.”
Aptean Routing & Scheduling allows them to plan routes using a variety of trucks and loading scenarios and gives them the delivery efficiency they need throughout their peak seasons. The team now completes the route plans in-house from one central location in Carlisle, where they have complete visibility into every load at every depot throughout the day in the UK.
For BSW, the software’s most significant selling point was the extensive functionality. Since BSW depends on a third-party fleet to deliver their product, they found it difficult to find a system that would allow them to utilise third-party haulage but still manage the route planning and scheduling themselves.
Aptean delivered on that in spades.
The Group Logistics Co-ordinator at BSW says, “We don’t run any of our own vehicles. We’re just planning the loads for third-party haulage contractors. All the [other] systems we explored were based on a company running their own vehicles—but what Aptean has allowed us to do is plan successive loads. If we’ve got a load coming from Fort William to Carlisle to our own site, we plan for that vehicle to be loaded straight back out and down the road, possibly delivering directly to customers. It was those benefits that we saw immediately. We were able to seamlessly pull all our operations together.”
Since implementing Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition, BSW has noted substantial benefits, including optimised, efficient routes planned in a fraction of the time.
The Group Logistics Manager says, “A high percentage of the work is done in much less time, allowing us – and the team – to focus strategically across other aspects of the business. And it doesn’t stop there. We’re always looking for ways to continuously improve and optimise our operation. Aptean Routing & Scheduling has given us the platform to do just that – and more.”
Aptean Routing & Scheduling gave the BSW Timber team enhanced planning capabilities, better efficiency, and complete visibility—all while reducing the number of resources needed to plan the routes. The software freed the team from outdated, manual planning processes and gave them a robust platform for growth.
Ready to meet and beat your delivery and operations challenges? Schedule a demo to see how Aptean Routing & Scheduling Paragon Edition can optimise your transport operations.
