Recently, Geoconcept visited, along with a partner SHV, the logistics department of American company Air Products to show how AP is using Geoconcept route optimization solution TourSolver. The meeting brought two of the main players in the industry around an important topic, efficiency and cost savings.

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading Industrial Gases company in operation for over 75 years. The Company’s core industrial gases business provides atmospheric and process gases and related equipment to manufacturing markets, including refining and petrochemical, metals, electronics, and food and beverage. Air Products is also the world’s leading supplier of liquefied natural gas process technology and equipment.

AP China has over 1,000 orders every day; these include both recurring and urgency next-day orders. The planners must finish all the scheduling on the previous day in order for the drivers to be able to receive their daily schedules on time. Due to the large amount of the customers and orders, and road constraints of dangerous goods transportation, the scheduling work for the planners is very complex and challenging. The planners’ workload used to be particularly heavy to ensure a correct use of the logistic fleet. Furthermore, the manual scheduling could neither be efficient nor avoid human error.

With Geoconcept TourSolver powered by HERE maps data and advanced road attributes, AP can visually identify all clients and warehouses on the map. The planners can assign orders to drivers with a click of a button. Thanks to hundreds of business parameters (lunch time, the maximum driving time required by law, clients’ time window...), the tool can calculate the optimal route schedule while making sure it matches an implementable and practical delivery plan.

"We need a system to help us to manage this vast amount of orders every day, and avoid mistakes as well." according to Mr.Ji, the planner manager of AP, "Thanks to TourSolver, an experienced planner needs 10 minutes at most to schedule over 500 orders. TourSolver is very easy to use, any planner with basic computer skills know how to use it quickly with a simple training."

Mr.Ji stated, "We don’t want to replace the planners by TourSolver. The planners’ experience is also very important. With TourSolver as an excellent tool, they can do a better and more efficient work."