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, a provider of real-time logistics scheduling software, is to be made available to UK small and medium enterprises (SMEs) 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 and it is suitable for a wide variety of delivery or collection operations. FAST features the 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. It 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 such as driver hours and distance travelled. The software 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 five vehicles or less; have a turnover of less than GBP3m (US5m) and must operate in mainland UK only.

    Julian Stephens, technical development manager at MJC² said, “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 solutions at this early stage in their development”
 

(Source:http://www.container-mag.com)