Lower Expenses
Build a better hand-off from the warehouse to transportation and reduce expenses on both sides of the house through an effective load planning process.
Build a better hand-off from the warehouse to transportation and reduce expenses on both sides of the house through an effective load planning process.
Improve customer service by reliably building loads using configurations that match specific customer requirements. Consistently follow product mixing restrictions, side door or unloading dock requirements, or specialized container rules.
Syntelic Load Planning determines where each and every case should be placed on an outbound load. Every load is examined uniquely, based on its own particular order volume and product mix characteristics. Load Planning uses Syntelic’s advanced optimization techniques to search through thousands of options to select the best configuration based on your business rules without the use of fixed templates. The result is a custom vehicle configuration constructed dynamically for each load.
Load Planning adapts to the needs of a wide variety of real-world operations, and is especially flexible when it comes to understanding equipment constraints. Trailer equipment may be automatically selected based on the load’s order volumes and other characteristics. Load Planning dynamically sizes compartments (for example, freezer, cooler, dry) to fit each load’s order volumes. It also follows other physical features and constraints such as side doors, center-divide bulkheads, and capacities.
Business rules also apply to the products being loaded. Some products might require specialized containers such as totes, smallwood or tray stacks. Some containers may have stacking restrictions based on the products in each container. Certain product types may be mixed, other may not. Certain products may be stored in only certain locations within the trailer.
In addition, certain customers may have restrictions of their own. Such as requiring certain stops not to be mixed with other stops (for example, for dock deliveries). Certain customers may have a different way of combining or handling certain product types altogether. All of these requirements are easily handling by Syntelic’s flexible mapping rules.
Load Planning sifts through each load’s order quantities to uncover items that should be selected in bulk rather than by-stop. Bulk selection and loading saves considerable warehouse labor as compared to case-by-case selection. Multi-stop bulk containers are positioned in the trailer at points that can be reached by the driver for unloading each stop without blocking access to non-bulked items for the same stops. Like all Load Planning features, the bulk process is highly configurable and may optionally be deactivated for certain product categories, specific items, or customers.
Load Planning also configures loads to avoid overloading vehicle axles. As Load Planning evaluates each potential load configuration, it also calculates the resulting weight that will placed on each axle of the assigned vehicle. Overweight configurations (and even near-capacity configurations) uncovered by the algorithm are used by the search process to seek alternate configurations that reduce the burden on heavily loaded axles. If no configuration is feasible within the axle weight limits, Load Planning clearly displays an alert to notify the user of the overweight condition.
Load planning provides immediate tangible benefits for outbound distribution operations.
Load diagrams generated by Load Planning are displayed in an easy-to-understand graphical format. Load assignments may be displayed in a variety of formats, both at a detailed or summary fashion. The user may even manually adjust the diagrams using intuitive drag-n-drop techniques. Diagrams may be printed for use by warehouse or transportation staff.