Whilst going through developing functionality to enable fixed routes, masters and copy runs, we went through a process seeing just where we could take the whole autoplanning feature.
Autofill is perhaps most exciting addition of the release, providing a significant advance in our existing route planning and optimisation.
By taking any existing, unplanned orders in Stream, Autofill finds the best routes to put those on.
It matches those routes to existing stops, so if you’re vehicles are already going somewhere Stream will put those orders onto those routes automatically.
Autofill will also identify and allocate nearby orders as well.
Stream will analyse existing runs / stops and identify orders for delivery and / or collection that are either nearby or en route and add those to the right routes. And Stream will so that across multiple routes in one step.
It’s really rather exciting.
Why might I use ‘Autofill’?
We think that all Stream Go subscribers will benefit from Autofill in some way.
For logistics operations taking advantage of fixed routes / milk runs, they’ll be able to use Autofill to find unplanned orders that can be put onto vehicles up to the point of departure.
If you’ve got a customer who needs a delivery or collection urgently, you’ll be able to use Autofill to find the best route to put that particular order on.
Also, if you’ve got a run scheduled for tomorrow, for instance, you can use Autofill to see if you can get any unplanned orders onto that particular run.
A guide to using Autofill
In the unplanned orders section select ‘Actions’ and then click ‘Autofill’.
This will bring up a pop-up where you can choose if you want to Autofill for:
- The selected run only
- Or, for all runs in the runs list.
You can also choose to remove:
- All planned stops
- All planned stops you’ve matched an order to (handy when they’re planned stops created when copying an order)
- Or, no planned stops.
In this same pop-up, you’ll also be able to choose a maximum run time. If this is reached, no more stops will be added to the run.
There’s also a tick box to choose whether you want to also add any nearby orders to the run(s). What classifies as nearby is set in the field below. In the example, any order that adds a total of 30 minutes or less to the run will be added.
You can see an example of a run before and after Autofill where orders with a matching location have been added to the run (without adding nearby stops).
Before Autofill:
After Autofill:
To learn more about using Autofill for your logistics operation, please contact Stream Support on support@go2stream.com.