Many companies receive Purchase Orders from their customers that do not result in fully utilized trucks for delivery. When this happens, Customer Service Reps (CSRs) will typically try to add more products and quantity to the order by either:
- Calling the customer to suggest additions to the order
- Manually adding to order
- Using a pre-defined list of products that can be added to orders, which are already agreed upon with the customer
When CSRs are manually adding products to the order, they cannot accurately gauge the impact of the order additions to the load’s axle weights, stackability, compatibility, customer requirements, warehouse requirements, etc. The result is that the loads are often still under-utilized even after the additional products are added due to a lack of technology.
ORTEC’s load building solutions enable customers to fill the orders with an “Automated Order Filler” module. With this process, the solution can grab orders that do not meet a defined threshold to be considered a Full Truck Load (FTL) and optimize the order with a set of filler products.
Based on ORTEC’s experience with our existing customers, the filler products are often defined from:
- An excel spreadsheet that the retailers or customers send to the CSRs each week
- A static list that the CSRs have always used
- VMI demand
The optimizer will take the list of Filler Products and work through different permutations and combinations of available items for the order. The optimizer will run a number of models (for example: 500 models, user-configurable) in a few seconds to determine the version that best maximizes the volume and weight of the order, while also taking into account stackability, axles, and customer and warehouse requirements.
Below is an example of an order Before and After the filler products were added.
The company benefits from this by reducing transportation costs and increasing productivity. By fully loading each truck, companies can ship the same volume of products in fewer shipments. Depending on the complexity of the load and products, it can take CSRs up to 30 minutes to manually build each load for some companies. By automating the process, companies are able to increase productivity and CSRs can focus on other tasks. The company’s customer also benefits, as they will hit their discount bracket pricing more often.
To learn more about ORTEC Load Building, contact your Account Representative or send us an email.
