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Some people like to play chess with their computers. Others, like the traffic foremen at Lowfield Distribution's Newport depot pit their route planning expertise against what their computer comes up with. Jack Semple reports on a happy relationship between man and machine
EVERY morning at around 11 o'clock there is a series of little contests in the traffic offices of Lowfield Distribution's depot in Newport, South Wales.
Traffic foremen Allan Close and Stephen Burge pit their experience and knowledge of local conditions against the memory and adding power of their computer, programmed at the company's headquarters in Dave ntry.
At issue is whether or not they have got their route planning right. Happily, they usually come out on top — route planning is one area in distribution where, despite extensive efforts to develop the perfect computer planner, human management in most companies remains essential to efficient operation. But computers do play a major role in Lowfield's operation, as I learned when I visited the Newport depot last month.
Lowfield Distribution is a subsidiary of Imperial Group and offers national distribution to a specific sector of the food and drink industry. It has a strong base of traffic from sister companies within Imperial, including Golden Wonder and HP, but has no right to this traffic and must remain competitive. Most of its traffic comes from outside companies. The customer base is relatively small, but Lowfield has developed sophisticated systems for administration with several large customers.
The Newport depot covers most of Wales, Bristol and South West England. It has 21 box vans, four artics, a 40,000sq ft warehouse, and has been operating since the early Seventies.
Central to the administration is an ICL ME29 computer system which talks each night to customers' computers, taking orders for delivery two working days later. The orders, incidently, will have been taken from the manufacturers' salesmen right up to the late evening of transmission, so that the system is highly responsive to the wishes of retailers and wholesalers.
Having taken the orders the ME29 prints out each order on the supplier's headed notepaper, so that they are ready for processing by 7.30 each morning. Orders from customers which are not on this system arrive by telex or post and have to be typed manually.
In the traffic office, they are pigeon holed according to day and area. The traffic planners also have a print-out of the special requirements of each outlet.
Over the past year Lowfield has surveyed all the outlets to which it delivers regularly, and asked the manager if he has a preferred time for delivery. Many have specified the time at which they are used to seeing the Lowfield lorry, and there has been little operational difficulty in accommodating those who have stated a preference. The exercise has raised the perceived service level at very little cost. In doing so, Lowfield says, it has benefitted its customers and therefore itself.
Armed with the necessary information, the traffic planner must arrange for the orders to be delivered as cheaply and profitably as possible.
This is where the computer, in this case a desktop Apricot, comes in. The computer does not help him plan, but checks the end result, At Lowfield, as with other national distribution companies, everything in theory takes a fixed amount of time, agreed with the Transport and General Workers' Union. It takes X minutes to unload 100 boxes of crisps, more than X minutes to shift 100 packs of canned beer, and so on. There are route standard times for getting to a drop area from each depot and for getting to each drop within the drop area.
All this information is held on computer. So too is the amount of revenue the company will receive for delivering each box or pack, and the fixed and variable operating costs involved in delivering them. It will also check that there is room in the vehicle selected for the goods to be delivered.
And then it points to the bottom line — how much profit, or loss, there is in the delivery. Fed with the information for each truck by the traffic planner, it will tell him instantly whether his plan is acceptable. Some drop areas, such as Pembroke in the far west, are never profitable — but the losses must be minimised. These losses are compensated for by profitable drops in nearby towns like Cardiff.
The real world is not, however, the same as the computer model, Some drivers' performance can be 30 per cent faster than the standards upon which the computer makes its calculations, and if this is not taken into account the potential for increased efficiency will be lost. Then there are problems of local conditions. At the moment the Severn Bridge delays can play havoc with scheduling. Flexibility is also needed in taking late orders.
The computer at Newport has been in operation for 18 months now, Initial suspicion was overcome when the planning staff saw the benefits it would bring in acting as a check for them. "We wouldn't go back," says traffic manager Matt Millichamp, While the computer confirms that the decisions of traffic managers are usually correct, it is particularly useful as a check for new staff, or when regular staff are unavailable. One additional benefit, incidentally, was that it helped support the operational managers' argument that the 16 tonners should have extended bodies capable of carrying 13 pallets. The point was accepted, and that move together with the specification of access doors all down both sides has raised the efficiency of the lorries.
Drivers are given considerable autonomy and responsibility once their load schedule has been planned. Apart from any pre-arranged timed deliveries, they can plan the pattern of deliveries themselves. Most of the drivers have been with Lowfield for years, some since it opened and they know their areas well. This policy of encouraging driver initiative makes them more willing to cope with minor problems on their own initiative. This helps efficiency, says Mr Millichamp.
Drivers' responsibilities start before they leave the depot. The drivers can instruct the warehousemen on how the load should be made up, and many load the traffic onto the vehicle themselves.
Bonus payments to drivers are linked to the standards on the computer. So a driver who is 30 per cent faster than the computer can earn extra bonus by doing one-and-a-third "standard" days in his day's work.
As a national company, Lowfield considers it necessary to lay down detailed standards and responsibilities. In using computers it has been careful to ensure that it does not confuse routine number crunching and office work which can be entirely automated with management needing day-to-day experience of changing local conditions. But the route planning aid keeps managers on their toes.