Cornwall’s St. Austell Brewery is gearing up its distribution performance with a state-of-the-art automated routing and scheduling solution from Paragon Software Systems.
The South West’s most successful independent brewer, retailer and wholesaler selected Paragon Multi Depot to help streamline and optimise its delivery planning. This will enable the company to reduce the number of its depots in Cornwall from four to one single super distribution centre based in St. Columb Major, with the option to utilise the other depots during peak demand. The company expects to boost customer service levels and reduce operational costs.
Implementation is under way and go-live is scheduled for third quarter 2009. During implementation, the Brewery is using Paragon Multi Depot to model optimised routes. The software is running alongside the company’s manual system that simply takes customer orders and assigns them to the appropriate delivery round. With Paragon modelling the best routes, adjustments can be made to the manual system and improvements are already being seen.
“We have great expectations of Paragon and it will help us to make huge improvements as we go through implementation. Then we can look forward to switching to full automation once we have all the parameters in place, which should be at the end of the second quarter 2009,” says Mike Voyzey, Logistics Director, St. Austell Brewery.
Voyzey has been tracking the routing and scheduling software market for several years and has been keeping a careful eye on Paragon’s range of solutions. He recognises the flexibility of the Multi Depot product and sees the opportunity to add other capabilities further down the line.
“Paragon is undoubtedly the market leader. The company has a high profile at logistics events and has a wide range of customers, including other brewers. We are very pleased with the progress we are making and the Paragon Support team is doing everything we ask,” concluded Voyzey.
