East Anglian family firm Alstons installed Paragon Multi Depot at its 25-vehicle upholstery division in Colchester to replace manual scheduling, and immediately planning time was cut by 50%.
On the basis of this benefit, plus additional advantages including improved fleet utilisation, a system was bought for Alstons Cabinets in Ipswich where, as well as an immediate reduction in planning time, the order cycle has been reduced by two weeks as a result of faster, more effective routing and scheduling.
Linked to Alstons order and manufacturing management systems and interfaced with ERP system Movex, Paragon is used weekly at each site to plan deliveries to nearly 5,000 high street shops and furniture store warehouses throughout the UK and Northern Ireland.
“Paragon has revolutionised our routing and scheduling operation and we couldn’t envisage working without it. In particular, making changes to the transport plan is now so much easier. No longer does one person have to remember all the road restrictions and shop opening times – the system takes these constraints into account and automatically updates the whole schedule.” Trevor Daldry, Alstons Cabinets.
