Plumbs, the furniture covers and reupholstery specialists, has adopted Paragon’s routing and scheduling software to reduce fuel consumption, increase productivity and enhance customer service within its supply chain. The leading transportation optimization solution will be used to better coordinate the company’s two-man collection and delivery fleet that is responsible for handling more than 1,000 items of furniture each month.
Paragon Single Depot software will replace a manual planning process that had become overly time-consuming and no longer supported the long-term growth strategy of the business. Plumbs operates an order cycle of approximately 8 to 10 weeks, from the initial purchase through to final delivery. Items are typically picked up within 14 days of order, with Paragon playing an important role moving forward to ensure customers receive a prompt collection service and effective delivery of the finished reupholstered or loose covered furniture.
The transportation planners will use the multi drop route planning software from Plumbs central base in Preston, Lancashire, working closely with the production team to create the daily schedules for all local and nationwide requirements and then calculate the most efficient routes. Each collection and delivery vehicle is responsible for up to 10 jobs per day and the optimization of the planning is expected to eliminate wasted mileage, increase transportation capacity and provide accurate arrival times that can be communicated to customers.
Derek Wright, Transport Manager at Plumbs commented: “Our logistics planning had become increasingly difficult and an unnecessary drain on our internal resources, so we needed a tool that would help us effectively create collection and delivery routes. We have worked closely with Paragon to implement a straightforward and effective solution that takes advantage of their proven software, technical expertise and high levels of ongoing support.”
William Salter, CEO of Paragon Software Systems said: “Routing and scheduling optimization offers a proven means of cutting costs, enhancing service levels and streamlining logistics processes. Every day our experienced team of support consultants are working with a large number of distribution operations across a range of industry sectors, who recognize our ability to boost operational performance and address many of the challenges facing their transportation planners.”
