Intelligent Food Distribution – Foodbank Australia – Case Study

Intelligent Food Distribution – Case Study

Foodbank SA is a leading charity that helps to feed more than 100,000 people every month in the state of South Australia.

Case Scenario

Scheduling a large number of food pick ups and deliveries across the state is an immensely challenging task. Considerations include the jobs’ timing requirements, weight and volume constraints, and distance travelled on road to name but a few. Foodbank SA would manually construct the run sheets daily based on upcoming demand, working hard to accommodate the various requests and constraints associated with the deliveries and pick-ups. This method was very time-consuming and required a significant amount of expertise to analyse, verify and correct the data. This meant that planners had less time for other key activities.

The Solution

Daitum is a cloud-based software solution that has been set up to produce optimised run sheets for the next day. Adoption of Daitum has been straight forward: Foodbank SA imports delivery and pick-up information daily from the existing CRM. Upon clicking “Optimise”, the system decides what jobs should go onto which vehicles, considering the size of each job to ensure there is capacity on the vehicle. At the same time the system determines optimal routes to minimise distances travelled while simultaneously making sure each job is done on time.

The Results

• The automation of this previously manual process has had a significantly positive impact on the overall operations of the business:
• Having corrected and verified data all in one place, combined with the processing power of Daitum’s cloud computing significantly speeds up the planning process.
• Being able to view all the jobs and routes on a single map allows for the routes to be immediately understood and to quickly identify jobs that should be postponed.
• The system-generated reports allow for quick verification that all goods have been loaded and provide simplified instructions to the drivers. Tracking individual jobs becomes easy.
• Others in the organisation can now generate high-quality run sheets to assist the designated planner who is freed up to concentrate on other essential activities.
• Foodbank SA can now easily assess how new programs can be accommodated and whether and how to expand the fleet to best support the people of South Australia.

Why Daitum

At Daitum, we understand that making good operational decisions is hard. And none are harder than rostering. With Daitum Rostering you will spend less time rostering plus deliver a roster that better meets your organisation’s needs.

“Daitum has helped us streamline how we schedule our deliveries and pick-ups, turning a manual process into an automated,

optimised and data driven one.”

Greg Pattinson CEO, Foodbank SA