ReadyRefresh, a subsidiary of BlueTriton Brands, is a leading bottled water delivery service in the US, with a revenue of over $1 billion, 1.3 million customers, and over 3,000 associates. The company operates 72 branch locations and delivers 13.8 million orders per year, covering 36.4 million miles. As a certified CarbonNeutral® company, ReadyRefresh is committed to reducing its environmental impact and enhancing its customer experience.

John Counts, Sr. Director Business Enablement, discussed Project Defrag and its impact within the organization. ReadyRefresh launched Project Defrag, an initiative to improve its fragmented route and scheduling structure and increase ease of service for its customer base. The project leveraged ORTEC Territory Routing (OTR) to create a customer-friendly ‘day of week’ schedule, assign drivers a 'book of business' to grow, and manage capacity and schedule design when ReadyRefresh will be in the area. Project Defrag also reduced the reliance on third-party couriers and improved the associated pain point of routing. By maximizing density, the project reduced miles and route count, resulting in significant cost savings and efficiency gains.

The impact of Project Defrag, enabled by ORTEC Customer Impact and Continuous Improvement, was remarkable. The project delivered $24 million in cost savings, including $13 million in labor, $6.5 million in miles, and $4.5 million in courier reduction savings. The project also improved the most important KPIs of the business, such as miles per stop, deliveries on designed day, and same driver delivering.

Looking forward, ReadyRefresh and ORTEC will continue partnering to deliver business impact. They are co-developing Decision Analytics (ORTEC’s successor to OTR), which will help ReadyRefresh predict opportunities, push insights to the field, conduct scenario modeling for leadership, and reengineer with a scalpel. For ReadyRefresh, the ORTEC partnership enables continued optimization, offsetting growth costs with continued productivity gains, maximizing truck utilization, and reducing mileage.