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Q: Same day courier ( No Answer,   2 Comments )
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Subject: Same day courier
Category: Business and Money
Asked by: eoj06-ga
List Price: $150.00
Posted: 29 Sep 2006 02:32 PDT
Expires: 29 Oct 2006 01:32 PST
Question ID: 769433
Describe in detail the value proposition and advantages of using
dynamic routing and scheduling software for a same day courier
service.(REQUIRE ANSWER ASAP.I DO CANNOT WAIT FOR A MONTH)
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There is no answer at this time.

Comments  
Subject: Re: Same day courier
From: catkong-ga on 03 Oct 2006 02:33 PDT
 
In the following, I will trace the agenda points to answer.


========
agenda



1?Routing on the road 
---- a good article about how dynamic routing and scheduling software
solve logistic problem, many details to be concerned to reduce
resources consumed. And you can imagin what it requires.

2?world famous software comparison  

3?limitations you have to count on



=====================
1. Routing on the road
????? WU Tao



(http://www.56training.com/shownews.asp?flag=%E7%89%A9%E6%B5%81%E7%9F%A5%E8%AF%86&id=384)

Imagine a distributor, which serves 100 supermarkets in a region,
needs to transport hundreds of tons of products from one center
warehouse to these markets every day. All of the orders from the
supermarkets could not be full truck delivered. How can the dispatcher
of the center warehouse decide which driver drives which truck to
deliver which order to the corresponding market is the most cost
efficient? Sometimes it is easy to judge from his experiences. However
in the most circumstances, it is impossible to do so. Now, Vehicle
Routing and Scheduling software can help. The optimized solution
generated by the Routing and Scheduling software may not be the best
one, but generally it is good enough to produce a substantial saving.
Most developers of the Vehicle Routing and Scheduling software claim
that their product can achieve a cost reduction from 10 to 30 percent.
According to ESRI [1], which developed the Vehicle Routing and
Scheduling solution of ArcLogistics Route, logistics costs equal 10
percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, with companies typically
spending 10 to 15 percent of their sales on logistics routing and
scheduling. We can imagine how big this cake could be.

1.        An overview of Vehicle Routing Software

a)        What is it? 

Generally speaking, it is a computerized Routing and Scheduling which
models the operations of Vehicle Routing Problems in the real world,
using the algorithms and heuristics developed by the scientists. In a
given period, a set of customers is served by a set of vehicles, which
are located in one or more depots, are operated by a set of crews
(drivers), and perform their movements by using an appropriate road
network. In this circumstance, the Vehicle Routing and Scheduling
Software is applied to find out an optimized solution of a set of
routes, assign each route to an appropriate vehicle that starts at a
depot, goes through a sequence of stops, and ends at its original
depot (or another depot), such that all (or most of) the requirements
of the customer(s) are fulfilled, all (or most of) the operational
constraints are satisfied and global transportation cost is minimized.

Normally, the customer requirements and operational constraints include: 

?          Depots, from which the vehicle starts or ends its trip,
?          Stops, of which the goods or people to be delivered, 
?          Amount of goods or people, 
?          Time Window, during which the customer can be served, 
?          Loading time, unloading time, 
?          Subset of available vehicles that can be used to serve the customer, 
?          Capacity of the vehicle, 
?          Shift of the crews, overtime
?          Road network, 
?          Etc?. 

b)         Adopt to different operations

Different operation has different characters, thus the software must
adopt different applications to satisfy different constraints. In the
case of ?Chinese Postman Problem?, such as snow plows, meter readers
and postmen, who must visit every point along a street, though routes
can be created by routing vehicles through nodes on a network, it is
more efficient to route vehicles through arcs (Arc Routing). On the
other hand, Node Routing is more appropriate in routing the wholesale
distribution, home delivery, the school buses, the vehicles for
transportation of handicapped persons, etc., of which the vehicle
moves from point to point.

Some vehicles don?t move things or people from place to place. They
are just used to support the jobs to be done ? vans for repair
technicians, plows for snow removal or sweeper for street cleaning,
etc. Routing for these vehicles is not constrained by shipment size
and vehicle capacity, because there are no shipments. Hence, the route
lengths are only constrained by the time in the driver's day or shift
[4]. On the contrary, the vehicles that transport passengers or
deliver goods have limited space for sitting and standing or for
accommodating the shipments. So the lengths of their routes are
constrains by the capacities.

Even in one industry, there exist several different layers of Vehicle
Routing. For instance, the less-than-truckload (LTL) industry, which
specialize in handling goods that is too large for the package
companies (UPS and the like), and too small for "truckload" (TL)
carriers, transport the shipments direct from origin to destination
[4].

The operation of LTL could be described as follows:

First, according to the senders? orders, the LTL company collects the
shipments by trucks form the scattered senders to an ?end-of-line?
terminal. During the collection, new senders could call the company
placing new orders at any time. The truck may need to add in new
pick-ups if its route is close to the sender and its capacity is still
available. This is a dynamic routing problem which requires the
software has enough flexibility for inserting new stops into the
existed routes and feed back the response rapidly.

Next, the shipments are shuttled from the ?end of line? to a regional
consolidation center, where they are sorted and consolidated according
to their destined consolidation region. The shuttled delivery is
mainly constrained by the capacity of the vehicle and the drivers?
shift. A carefully scheduling is necessary to ensure the fully
utilization of the equipment and work shift [4].

Then it come the line haul deliveries to other consolidation centers,
which are near the destinations. Actually, this kind of line haul
delivery contains the backhauls delivery of the shipments between the
consolidation centers. The routing and scheduling requires balancing
the inter-regional flows to minimize empty equipment miles and to
minimize driver and fleet downtime [4].

From the regional consolidation center, the shipments are shuttled to
the ?end-of-lines?. It is really a back haul of the second step of
delivery too.

At last, all of the goods are delivered from the end-of lines to their
final destination. This trip integrates the first step, collecting the
shipments from the senders and sending the goods to the receivers on
the same route. So it becomes a kind of Pickup and Delivery Problem
with one depot and an indefinite of stops. The dynamic routing becomes
inevitable and a computing time of days / hours is obvious
unacceptable.

Few vendors of Vehicle Routing and Scheduling software can provide
generic products designed to serve a broad range of applications. Most
have specialized in an industry sector. For example, companies like
Trapeze, Routelogic and VersaTrans serve the transit industry, UPS
Logistics serves the beverage and food distribution industry, and CAPS
Logistics has been strong in distributing manufactured products. On
the other hand, MicroAnalytics (TruckSTOPS) and ESRI (ArcLogistics
Route) have gone after a broader market with a more generic and
lower-priced product. And ILOG has established a unique position,
providing a library of solver rather than a family of interfaces [6].



========================================
2?world famous software comparison  

company 	  Software   						 Prise/Date		tech Support		recommand
--------    ---------  						 -----------  --------------	---------
ESRI		    ArcGIS		 						 25000$/2004	30% 						*more professional, complex
Intergraph  GeoMedia Professional	 <=P(ArcGIS)	30%							*
MapInfo     MapInfo    
AutoDesk  
Bentley  
SmallWorld  


Relevent Link:
----------------
	Esri: http://www.esri.com/
	GeoMedia Professional  http://www.intergraph.com/gmpro/default.asp
	GeoMedia customer about   http://www.intergraph.com/customers/default.asp
													http://www.intergraph.com/geomedia/
													
	
=====================================
3?limitations you have to count on


	From the part 1, we can find out:
	1)All of software are based on the GIS system, which requires bilions
of geography data, complex arithmetic and image handling tech, etc. So
most of them are expensive.
	
	2)A lot have to pay beyoned the prise:
	  Large sums of information has to be put into the system. 
	  The training will last quite a few month even after the kicking off.
	  The most important of all, your company will be reorganized, using
the standard workflow, requiring more emplyees maybe. The process will
be lasting quite long time, and painfull. Whether you can pass the
difficulty is completely up to the boss.
	  The consultation cost will be a lot then.
	  
	3)More equipment you add to, more profit it will bring to you. I
think the real profit will come to you after 1 year after the success
of 2)
			
		http://www.intergraph.com/customers/default.asp

	Good Luck
	Hope the information will be helpful. Good luck
Subject: Re: Same day courier
From: catkong-ga on 03 Oct 2006 02:40 PDT
 
Software: ArcGIS  
company: ESRI
Prise/Date:  25000$/2004
recommand:  *  more professional, complex

Software:	GeoMedia Professional  
company:	Intergraph
Prise/Date:25000$/2004
recommand:*


Software:	MapInfo
company:	MapInfo


Software: AutoDesk

Software: Bentley

software: SmallWorld

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