Greggs is optimising the performance of its distribution operation with the use of Paragon’s routing and scheduling software, part of a £100 million investment programme that is reshaping its supply chain within the UK. The retailer has managed to model transport requirements following the consolidation of its Edinburgh and Glasgow bakeries to improve fleet utilisation by over 30% and remove almost 900 miles a week from its local plans.
“Following the decision to develop a centre of excellence that would service all shops in Scotland, we had the opportunity to examine our transport plans to target cost reductions and improve standards,” explained Richard Penna, Group Logistics Manager at Greggs. “The Paragon routing and scheduling software quickly enabled us to identify where improvements could be made and create highly-efficient multi-drop route plans that would better serve our retail network.”
The company used Paragon’s Multi Depot software to undertake a strategic review of the transport operation needed for the expansion of the Glasgow site to cover all Scottish shops. As a result of this decision, Greggs was able to resize its fleet to just 24 commercial vehicles by optimising multi-drop route plans, realigning driver shifts and removing a trunking operation.
The leading bakery retailer has managed to significantly reduce the overall mileage travelled through improved planning, despite the distance of many vehicle journeys increasing since the site consolidation. This has contributed to a fuel saving of more than 2%, equating to reductions of around 35 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
“We are using the Paragon software to regularly review the efficiency of our multi-drop route planning across the UK, as well as remodel specific areas of the operation as part of a larger major change project. We are making record levels of investment in our infrastructure to create a blueprint for logistics that can be applied across the business. This needs to be backed-up by best-practice route planning to achieve optimum performance and support our transformation into the leading food-on-the-go retailer,” concluded Penna.
