The best laid plans of mice and men often mean that changes need to be made to orders, jobs and tasks in a dynamic environment after the planning function has concluded for the current day or work period. Last minute orders, reactive maintenance jobs, vehicle breakdowns, bulk outs, ad-hoc collections and asset returns all play a part in stretching and pressurising the plan and often it is not possible to complete the plan to schedule as determined at the beginning of the day.

In order to try to maintain control operators must engage in numerous phone conversations with drivers to direct them to jobs and collections or to re-route existing deliveries based on changing customer priorities, all adding to the pressures on the plan and the customer service expectations.

The Microlise Active Journey Planning module, an add-on to the Transport Management Center, enables operators to test and apply live real-time changes to schedules as they are being executed. New orders can be created or imported and allocated to journeys. Resources, jobs and tasks can be added, removed or resequenced on a journey or moved to an alternative journey. The system recalculates journey leg times an warns if this creates unforseen problems. Once accepted, the routes affected are updated within the Transport Management Center and updates are also sent to any mobile data terminal applications used by the drivers. Drivers are advised by messaging of a change to their schedule.

• Manage dynamic allocation of mobile worker tasks in real-time
• Live “what if” scenario testing to optimise resource and asset utilization
• Improve on-time deliveries
• Re-plan in real-time to avoid customer service and KPI issues
• Make changes to manifests for collections and deliveries en-route as backhauls, bulk outs or vehicle breakdowns arise