2. Company Background
• A major New Zealand dairy company-had 350
client farmers served by 12 tankers over two
shifts.
• Because of rising client base and rising milk
collection cost- Company decided to implement a
heuristic-based DSS to improve milk tanker
scheduling.
• Previous vehicle schedulers-Set up schedule
manually, estimated milk supply by supplier,
budget, attempted to minimize the cost per
kilogram of milk.
3. DSS Implementation
• To solve routing problem, the company
developed a model-based DSS-Fleetmanager
• Experience and preferences of the expert
schedulers takes in to consideration
• The development team worked closely with
schedulers and other experts in modeling.
• The vehicle routine models were solved to create
solutions. Schedulers can observed these via a
graphical user interface.
• Output screens of the system can be found at
orms-today.com
4. Outcome Of Implementation
• Company’s collection cost have been
decreased by more than 30%
• Schedule development time has decreased by
more than 50%
• Client complaints have decreased by more
than 60%
• Intangible benefits include a morale boost
among schedulers.
5. • The heuristic methodology of the DSS
developed for this company could be applied
to almost all complex delivery system.
