European Funding Enables MJC²
Research and development undertaken as part of FLAGSHIP, a part EU-funded maritime transport project is set to directly benefit logistics firms. Powerful vehicle routing and scheduling software called FAST which was developed by MJC², the leading provider of real-time logistics scheduling software, is to be made available to UK SMEs absolutely free of charge. The software was created as a result of MJC²’s work to reduce congestion at container terminals during its involvement with the FLAGSHIP-RTS sub-project.
FAST helps to plan and schedule vehicle movements and uses powerful optimisation software to calculate the most efficient routes, which should save time, miles and money. It is suitable for a wide variety of delivery or collection operations from furniture to building supplies and from food deliveries to commercial recycling. FAST is feature rich delivering automatic allocation of deliveries and/or collections to vehicles, based on the postcode of each visit and taking into account the vehicle capacity and the driver’s available working hours. FAST also provides automatic sequencing of routes to minimise travel time and distance while estimating arrival and departure times while enabling vehicle and driver movement planning and reporting KPIs such as driver hours, distance travelled. FAST features interactive graphical displays of the schedules and routes, with easy-to-use data editors and reports and rapid scheduling automatically plans routes within a few seconds.
In order to receive the software without charge a business must manage a delivery and/or collection operation; have 5 vehicles or less; have a turnover of less than 3 million and must operate in mainland UK only.
Julian Stephens, Technical Development Manager at MJC² said: ““Our systems are used by companies such as TNT, B&Q and Hanson. Our full set of software tools is very wide ranging and can address very large complex operations, but we have created a free package incorporating some of these tools that can be used by smaller businesses operating delivery or collection operations.
“We are providing the system free of charge to small businesses as a no strings incentive. We believe that as these companies grow and mature they will want to consider using some of our more sophisticated products because they have first-hand experience of our exceptional solutions at this early stage in their development”
Simon Whitehead of specialist furniture retailer Myakka said: “We have found that accurately calculating the correct amount of time between different delivery destinations while accommodating installation time to be increasingly difficult. As Myakka grows, this problem will only become more challenging. The opportunity to use a clever piece of software like FAST completely free of charge was, as the infamous Donald Trump would say, ‘ a no brainer’; we are still in the set up phase but we are looking forward to reaping the benefits Of this SMART piece of technology.”
Mr Herman de Meester, Coordinator of FLAGSHIP commented: “I am delighted to see this commercial application being deployed for the wider good. It has always been the stated intent that research projects such as FLAGSHIP should result in practical solutions which benefit industry. I wish MJC² every success with this initiative.”
Source: www.mjc2.com
