The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Operational decision · 2005
FRILAC's Access-based route builder cut frozen delivery costs 10%
FRILAC built LOGDIS in Microsoft Access with Clarke-Wright savings, cutting frozen-food route distances and costs about 10%.
FRILAC
the move
FRILAC, a frozen-food company in Navarre, Spain, organized deliveries around vehicle runs by habit. Management found the process inaccurate and expensive: routes were built by experience, not by distance.
The company adopted LOGDIS, a decision-support system built in Microsoft Access. It designs routes with Clarke and Wright's savings algorithm adapted to the area's road network, displays the final routes, prints reports for drivers and estimates route costs, all integrated into FRILAC's management.
FRILAC implemented the results and achieved an average cost saving of 10%, turning route building from a weekly guessing game into a repeatable calculation.
why it works
- The savings algorithm builds routes bottom-up from the cheapest links, not from habit.
- Driver reports and cost estimates made the new routes easy to run and justify.
- Integration into company management meant routes stayed current as orders changed.
what transfers
You don't need an enterprise suite to fix routing: a savings algorithm in a database, matched to the local road network, cut costs about 10% at FRILAC.
what came after
FRILAC kept LOGDIS in daily use and averaged 10% delivery cost savings; the paper in Interfaces documented the design as a low-cost, Access-based alternative to expensive routing systems.
references
- The DSS LOGDIS Optimizes Delivery Routes for FRILAC's Frozen Products
- The DSS LOGDIS Optimizes Delivery Routes for FRILAC's Frozen Products
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.