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Vehicle operators routing and scheduling their delivery or collection fleets with TruckStops can now see their journey plans displayed on screen against the familiar background of detailed colour mapping of their own choice, and have much more freedom to amend the optimised journeys interactively on screen. The interface has also been brightened and modernised, and the route details, gannt chart and map windows are all synchronised for ease of use.
These are among the advances in the new version 3.0 of TruckStops for Windows, which is released this month by Kingswood MapMechanics, the company which distributes and supports the system in Britain. |
TruckStops, one of world’s most popular routing and scheduling systems, has always been able to display its optimised routes against an outline map of the country or region in question.
With release 3.0 (Standard version or higher), users can substitute detailed, vector or full-colour raster mapping such as Ordnance Survey’s Landranger 1:50,000 series or NAVTEQ street level mapping, or use several different maps for viewing at different scales. This allows the operator to see the pattern of deliveries proposed by TruckStops against the familiar backdrop of detailed colour maps, zooming in and out to display the actual roads, towns and villages that lie in the area covered by the route.
Mary Short, Kingswood MapMechanics’ managing director, says: “This represents a quantum leap in ease of use. The operator can quickly spot anomalies or fine-tune the routes, taking account of real-world factors such as last-minute requests from customers.”
Fine-tuning is made easier in this new release by an extension to the drag-and-drop capabilities of the system, which is available in all versions. Users have always been able to move individual call points within the graphics window by dragging their icons to new positions – changing the sequence of collections or drops on the route. This process automatically recalculates the whole route, checking for instance that it still meets time constraints, delivery time windows and weight parameters, and gives the user the choice about whether or not to break any pre-defined rules.
Now users can select not just one call at a time, but a whole group of calls, rearranging the route much more quickly. The calls that they select need not even be consecutive; they can fall anywhere on the route.
Additionally, operators can now use the drag-and-drop process to rearrange calls in text view as well as the map window – an entirely new feature. They can also drag calls between the two types of window.
The synchronisation of the text, map and gannt chart windows is fast and intuitive. When the operator clicks on a route listed in the text window, the map zooms in on the selected route and the gannt chart is redrawn to depict clearly when the vehicle is moving and when it has stopped.
“The benefit for users is that these advances have produced a system that is much more natural and intuitive,” says Mary Short. “This makes it even easier to see the advantages of TruckStops solutions over those achieved by manual scheduling or other software.” |
