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One of the UK’s longestestablished routeing and scheduling packages, TruckStops VRS claims to be efficient, effective and flexible. We look at what it can do and put it to the test
Words: Toby Clark MapMechanics is well known as a mapping data supplier and has offered a vehicle routeing and scheduling system called TruckStops VRS for almost 20 years. The system originated in the US, but MapMechanics founder and chairwoman Mary Short says that much of its development has taken place with UK customers in mind.
TruckStops VRS is a stand-alone product suitable for a variety of operators, but there are additional modules for specialist applications (see box). Users range from straightforward haulage operations to 3PLs, wholesalers, manufacturers and debt-collection agencies.
Short says: “People buy TruckStops to push more work through the existing leet or to see how they can improve customer service without increasing the leet size. Or by introducing different levels of service to different customers, highlighting areas of company strategy. They may not have been aware that there is a tool available to do it with.” MapMechanics was set up in 1987 (as Kingswood) to provide journey-based pricing systems for customers such as Shell. It now has about 30 employees, making it one of the largest players in the routeing and scheduling market.
Short has a background in software development and sales, including a stint at a Dutch irm that sold routeing and scheduling systems (she speaks French, German and Dutch). “I’ve always been in the software industry, selling software to industry to meet business objectives,” she says.
By 1991, the irm was distributor for the AA’s digital roadmap software and Short was contacted by Mike Hooban, founder of US irm MicroAnalytics who was in the market for mapping data for his routeing and scheduling product, which was called TruckStops VRS. With her background, Short “asked the right questions” and became the UK distributor of MicroAnalytics’ products.
TruckStops was already an established product in the US and became a market leader: “The world’s most widely deployed and best-established vehicle routeing and scheduling optimisation system,” according to MapMechanics. Hooban says TruckStops has been benchmarked against a theoretical optimum result and he and Short are conident it has some of the best optimisation algorithms on the market. The irst UK customer for TruckStops VRS was laundry irm Initial, which apparently saved £1m annually after implementing the system. The second customer was ofice products wholesaler Spicers, which is still an enthusiastic user of TruckStops. Other customers include Gregory Distribution, Wincanton, Solaglas and Fenland Laundries.
Entering the data
Like other routeing and scheduling systems, TruckStops VRS has an import wizard that can bring in data from a variety of sources: ERP and WMS systems, lat-ile databases or spreadsheets, for instance. These form two main sets of information: delivery/collection data (typically known as a Stop File – a collection of Stop records) and resource data (a Truck File). TruckStops uses a Stop File rather than maintaining a separate Customer File and Order File – Short says it is easier to maintain a single stop record, containing both customer and order information (usually combined by the ERP or WMS) than it would be to reconcile two separate records – particularly in homedelivery situations.
These sets of data are visible as lat tables, which can be sorted, iltered and edited from within TruckStops, with all the usual drag-and-drop and search-and-replace function of Windows; alternatively, a straightforward link allows tables to be edited in Microsoft Excel. Individual stop records or truck records can also be pulled out and modiied.