How to Manage Vehicle Load Planning in Dynamics GP

 

Optimize Truck Utilization and Flexibility if Pick Pack Ship Operations

Microsoft Dynamics GP Vehicle Load planning Module

For some distributors, having your own truck fleet, combined with customer delivery requirements, can pose a number of questions.

Within the outbound logistics process are you making best use of the fleet?

Are deliveries picked efficiently?

You also need to know that your trucks are not over laden, and that customer deliveries are aligned to each customer’s preferred delivery days and routes.

In this video, we show you how:

  • Customer delivery profiles can be used to generate the correct delivery date, linked to the correct route,
  • Loads can be manually or automatically created, and assigned to vehicles,
  • Picking can be conducted by order or bulk picked by load
  • Loads can be amended in line with a vehicle’s weight and volume capacity
  • Loads are supported by both picking documentation and driver manifest

 

Watch the video to see the Trinity Vehicle Load Planning module in action. Or click below to learn more about our popular Trinity Distribution Suite for wholesale distributors using Microsoft Dynamics GP:

Video Transcript

How to Manage Vehicle Load Planning in Dynamics GP

Welcome to this presentation on the Vehicle Load Planning module, from Dynavistics.

Many wholesale distributors will use their own fleet of vehicles to make deliveries.   This poses several issues from an operational point of view that's not addressed in core Dynamics GP. The pick/pack/ship operation may often be based on the load or truck that the goods are being dispatched on.  There'll be a need to ensure effective use of trucks without overloading them, and provisions for driver manifest or a master delivery sheet plus individual order documentation arranged in drop sequence.  

The Vehicle Load Planning module allows us to allocate delivery routes and drop numbers to customer ship to addresses depending on the day of the week. 

  • We can view order dispatch information summarized by date and delivery route.
  • Create loads from dispatches and allocate loads to vehicles.
  • Compare the weight and volume of a load against the vehicle’s capacity.
  • And produce sales documents, picking tickets, and driver’s load sheet by load.

It also integrates with Dynamics GP Advance Picking to print bulk picking lists by load.  So how does this work?

Before we start to process this order, let's have a look at a couple of things behind the scenes.  One item functionality we can utilize is service levels.  Here, this customer is offered a gold standard which means if we receive an order by midday, the customer will receive a same-day delivery, as opposed to, say, silver, where an order by two o'clock will guarantee next day delivery.  

If we drill down a little on the delivery address, we can see that we deliver on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and we can see the associated routes used on each of those delivery days.  These delivery days, combined with service levels if used, help calculate an actual requested ship date at the time of order entry.   We can also flag whether the customer requires us to confirm an actual delivery slot and record any standard delivery instructions.  As far as the items are concerned, we can record for each unit of measure in the schedule the weight and volume.  This will be needed for total load calculations.

This screen is designed to give the Transport Department complete visibility of all customer pending transactions.   This includes orders not yet released into the pick/pack/ship cycle and collection notes, which instruct the driver to collect bills to be returned.   

In this demonstration, I'm using GP’s Advanced Distribution.  Here we see several fulfillment orders along with their advanced distribution status.  The first order in the list has a warning message that we need to book the delivery with the customer.  The delivery button icon on the right-hand side allows us to do this.  As expected, it can drill down and view any of the documents in detail.  The Quick Maintenance button allows us to make immediate on/off alterations to the standard route associated with each delivery address and the standard drop, which is used to control route sequencing.  You can also have the number of parcels.  The main purpose of this screen is to enable us to assign orders onto vehicle loads, and there are two ways of doing this.

The first is to manually select individual orders, as I’m doing here, click the Add to Load button, take the next load number, and select a vehicle from the fleet.  Against each vehicle, we hold a total weight and volume capacity, as well as a cost per mile, which is useful from which to produce our own SQLl or smart list reports on load profit.  In this example, clicking the Add to Load button will create a load comprising the four selected orders.  

An alternate approach is to select Auto Create and select the appropriate fulfillment order stages for inclusion, along with any collection notes if you’re using the Returns Management module from Dynavistics.  By selecting the Preview button, Load Planning will then group orders for the three routes along with the usual vehicle that's assigned to each route.  It will show a total number of drops for each suggested load, and it will compare each vehicles weight and volume capacity with a total weight and volume of the orders on each potential load.   The second load on this screen has a warning message saying that although underweight, it's exceeded the volume capacity of the truck.  The potential loads that don't exceed capacity, we can proceed and create the loads.  Even once loads are created, we can still reassign orders from one load to another if, say, it results in better utilization of our trucks.  

Once loads are finalized, we can produce our documentation by load via picking tickets, packing slips or invoices.  In addition, we can also print consolidated picking notes, where each line represents a total demand for each item across all orders on the load; that way the picker only has to go through the pick phase once.  All the remains, then, is to print the drivers manifest which will list the orders due to delivery on each load.  This can be printed in summary, as shown here, or down to individual order line level, as shown here.

Vehicle Load Planning helps calculate order delivery dates based on customer delivery profiles, facilitates the best use of delivery trucks based on weight and volume comparison, and supports a pick/pack/ship cycle by providing order picking, bulk picking and customer documentation printing by load.

This presentation will have several short videos on our website the cover additional Inventory, Purchasing, and Order Processing functionality that will complement your Dynamics GP system.

I hope you found this presentation interesting.  If you'd like to know more, please schedule your free demonstration today.  Thank you.

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