The “Perfect” Foodservice Delivery

Is there such a thing as the “Perfect” delivery in the food service industry? There are so many variables that impact delivery costs. Let’s review some of these common issues and what they tend to result in:

Routing – out of route miles not only have a have dramatic impact on fuel consumption, the resulting delays can have a negative impact on customer service with late arrivals and missed delivery windows. Additionally, when drivers select or are assigned routes that will exceed their available hours of service, the company is at risk of facing non-compliant fees.

Paperwork errors – if you’re in the delivery industry, the amount of paperwork you process is unfortunately very familiar. Manifests, driver logs, inspection reports, invoices, delivery routes, credits/returns, physical assets (pallets, bins, crates, etc.) are manually processed on a daily basis.

Shrinkage – no, this is not a reference to a great 80’s sitcom. What this refers to is lost profit based on not getting paid for things allocated in your operating plan. In addition to spoilage, and OSD (overs, shorts and damages) a common contributor to shrinkage is theft – disappearing inventory from the delivery truck. It’s always funny when the items that are reported “missing” from the drivers are the cases of T-bone steaks, and never the broccoli.

These are just a sample of the types of issues that plague foodservice delivery. The question is, are these problems accepted and commonly written off? Or, is there an alternative with best practices and technology to help improve customer service, reduce costs and increase business productivity? Is the perfect delivery attainable?

Well, today’s new technology addresses many of the challenges facing the delivery process. The combination of fleet management, wireless communications, on-board/in cab computing and handheld computers/scanners with mobile delivery applications provide new levels of visibility and automation beyond the warehouse, into the delivery vehicle and onto the loading docks of customers.

Routing systems can track each driver and their available hours, and assign routes that fit within their availability based on known drive times. On-board computing systems can not only provide GPS tracking for real-time route validation, many systems can alert when drivers go out of route, track & calculate out of route miles, identify unknown stops and measure the time between stops. Additionally these systems can provide instant messaging to drivers, verify delivery locations and run in-cab, turn-by-turn navigation applications. There is now more visibility than ever before into routing and driver performance to optimize delivery routes, and with web-based applications and standard interfaces such as XML and web services, these once-disparate systems can now integrate seamlessly to automate many processes, improve customer service and reduce fuel consumption.

In many companies, deliveries create unless amounts of paperwork. Forms and documents constantly require manual, human data input, which businesses base their entire operations on. These labor-intensive administrative processes are subject to error in nearly every step they touch – particularly in item counts. Inaccurate counts can impact inventory, customer service, forecasts and ultimately profits. Unfortunately, paper-based processes are often “counted” or have data inputs multiple times, further increasing the chance for errors. The adoption and integration of handheld computers, bar code scanners, mobile delivery applications and soon RFID alleviates many of these error-laden processes, and automates data capture.

Controlling inventory and asset loss is a critical step towards increasing profits in delivery operations. Electronic manifests combined with scanned inventories for each delivery provide an accurate count of every item on a specific truck and details on where those items need to go. With mobile delivery applications, every item on a vehicle must be accounted for at all times. This helps to avoid incorrect items at a site, incorrect item quantities at a site, items delivered to the wrong site, items that don’t belong on a truck, items that are manually picked at the delivery site and items that are missing from the truck. By having every item electronically scanned and accounted for, the opportunity and potential for theft is reduced if not eliminated and the cost of shrinkage is avoided.

While the Perfect Delivery may still be a challenge, it is more attainable than ever before. The implementation of these integrated systems and efficiencies may not yield errorless delivery operations, the impact on productivity and cost savings is clearly compelling enough for any private fleet, LTL or TL for-hire fleet.

Please comment on your thoughts on whether the "Perfect Delivery" is possible and why.

Author: Frank Moreno