Meter readers working for Lowri Beck Services, Britain's longest-established independent specialist in this field, are reaching their destinations more quickly and spending far less time planning their movements, following the introduction of a routing and scheduling system from MapMechanics.
The system is now planning the routing of over 10,000 visits a day, and has delivered "huge business savings," says managing director Bob Vernon. It has also helped the company compete on a more equal footing with other, larger meter-reading organisations, he adds.
"The routes taken by our operatives are now the shortest and the 'best fit' for their work load," Bob Vernon says. "Operatives are freed from the time-consuming task of planning their own routes, which means we are performing much more efficiently."
Lowri Beck was established ten years ago, and operates throughout Britain, handling meter-reading for around a dozen electricity, gas and water suppliers such as EDF Energy, Npower, Scottish and Southern Energy and Scottish Power. Over the years it has created an extensive portfolio of its own software to manage its operations, and it uses a GPRS-based mobile data system to deliver details of visits to its home-based operatives.
However, prior to the introduction of the new routing and scheduling system, operatives were responsible for sorting and planning their own journeys, which they did on a weekly basis. This job took up a significant amount of time, and also reduced the flexibility of the operation.
Since operatives on busy urban routes sometimes have to visit well over a hundred premises a day, a further problem with the old system was that operatives were not always able to plan the most efficient routes between call points.
The main components in the new system are TruckStops, the leading routing and scheduling system, and GeoConcept, the powerful geographic information system - both of which are supplied and supported by MapMechanics.
Lowri Beck's Oracle-based in-house work management system now feeds call requests to GeoConcept, and the routing team at the company's Wigan headquarters uses the software to group them interactively on a map, working primarily on the basis of postcodes.
The calls are then passed to TruckStops, which automatically schedules them in the optimum way, respecting time window constraints and other detailed requirements. The resultant schedules are then fed via the GPRS server directly to the handheld terminals or PDAs carried by the operatives. So instead of receiving lists of calls that need to be sorted into journeys, they are given pre-structured schedules - potentially saving them hours of planning.
"And because we can re-run TruckStops at any time, in theory we could amend our schedules day by day. We have much more power to manage our operations proactively and responsively."
The handheld units used by Lowri Beck are mostly Intermec Color 760 terminals and iMate PDAs - both running under the Windows Mobile operating system. "Standard PDAs are more fragile than ruggedised terminals," Bob Vernon admits, "but they are much less expensive, and tend to be more readily available. We find it pays to dual-source."
Regarding the choice of the MapMechanics scheduling solution, he comments: "We looked at various other resource allocation systems before choosing MapMechanics, but they tended to be all-embracing suites that included work management as well. We wanted a flexible system that would integrate effectively with our in-house software."
He adds: "We've worked hard to make our own mobile application as flexible and configurable as possible, and we wanted to maintain that approach with the scheduling. So we particularly like the fact that both TruckStops and GeoConcept are modular and configurable, and integrate well with existing systems."
The MapMechanics system is particularly helpful in competitive terms, he says, because much of the company's work involves special reads and "cycle" visits - occasional calls made on demand or according to a plan - rather than blanket reading of all meters in a given area. "Where other companies might be reading 60 per cent of the meters in a street, we might be reading only two or three, so travel is a big cost element for us, which puts extra pressure on us to organise journeys efficiently. MapMechanics has really helped here."
For the future, Lowri Beck has plans to extend its use of the MapMechanics system even further. "We're looking at automating the whole planning process, including the part in which GeoConcept groups calls together. We also want to use GeoConcept as a visual and analytical tool. We could use it for analysis of key performance indicators or to create audit trails, and it could help us enhance our employment terms."
Click here for more pictures |
