Window, door and conservatory manufacturer Future Products has revolutionised its transport operation with computerised delivery route planning from Paragon Software Systems. The Paragon software used for the daily dynamic planning of deliveries has cut the time it takes to plan its transport operations from one day to one hour.
Future Products is confident that the Paragon delivery route planning software will boost customer service, improve reliability and reduce operational costs. The company assessed Paragon after strong recommendations from its two main suppliers – Synseal Extrusions and Door Stop International.
“We have to remove manual planning and paperwork from our delivery operations to improve efficiencies. We run fixed routes with variable quantities of high value, breakable products on board each vehicle. As you would expect, it is not easy to plan such complex deliveries manually. Planning deliveries on paper takes many hours to complete and this is valuable time we could use to improve our service,” said Stuart Bower, Technical Services Manager, Future Products.
“We spoke to our partners and they said that Paragon had been their ‘secret weapon’ for accurate routing and scheduling. They use the software to provide us with reliable on time deliveries and we recognised the software could do a similar job for Future Products. Paragon showed the delivery route planning software to us and it was clear that it would relieve us of a major time-consuming task.”
Future Products, a Nottinghamshire-based family business, supplies a range of windows, doors and conservatories to trade customers throughout England and the south of Scotland. The company currently operates from three depots and is planning to open another three in the future, in line with business growth. Future Products will use the software to strategically plan the sites of the new depots, locating them where the company can best serve its customers. The delivery route planning software will also enable the company to investigate the feasibility of extending its delivery capability to other parts of the UK that it does not currently supply.
