Banham Poultry, the Norfolk-based supplier of high quality fresh chicken products, has adopted Paragon’s routing and scheduling software to support the growth of the business and its ongoing investment programme. As well as gaining added visibility and control over the delivery operation that transports more than one million birds every week, the company will use the software to adapt and respond to changing customer and market demands.

“We operate a complex supply chain that combines both live collections and customer deliveries. We needed a solution that would simplify our planning processes as well as enable us to make informed business decisions,” explains Craig Riches, Head of Transport at Banham Poultry. “Paragon’s routing and scheduling software will allow us to bring together a huge amount of operational information into a single system – optimising daily live planning and route optimisation – as well as providing a powerful strategic planning tool to support the ongoing growth of our business.”

The Paragon routing and scheduling software, selected following a detailed review of the marketplace, will replace existing manual systems used by Banham Poultry. Moving forward, the company will centralise all day-to-day planning for its fleet of 34 commercial vehicles – including a mix of livestock and temperature-controlled trailers – and a team of 50 drivers. This will reduce the amount of time required to plan collections and deliveries, while ensuring that transport routes are efficient, achievable and compliant.

The 24/7 transport operation typically handles 30 daily collections from around 50 farms, as well as 90 deliveries to retail and wholesale customers, including multiple drops to eight distribution centres operated by two of the UK’s leading supermarket chains. With customers increasingly demanding tighter delivery windows and more detailed communication, Banham Poultry will use Route Execution to integrate the routing and scheduling software with its tracking system. This will enable the company to monitor how the day’s plan is progressing to quickly resolve any potential issues, as well as analyse plan vs actual performance data to identify areas of improvement.

Banham Poultry will also take advantage of the strategic modelling capabilities of Paragon’s Single Depot software to target continuous improvement. “We are constantly reviewing how we do things, so we can confidently provide the highest quality products and service to all our customers. Paragon’s advanced routing and scheduling solution will enable us to create what-if scenarios to understand the impact of any planned change, and undertake cost-to-serve analysis to gain added operational insight,” commented Riches.

William Salter, Managing Director of Paragon Software Systems commented: “Companies such as Banham Poultry are under pressure to operate efficient, sustainable and compliant transport operations in a highly competitive market place. The food processing sector faces a range of transport-related labour, environmental and cost pressures, so needs to find clever ways of working to manage this level of complexity. Implementing Paragon’s routing and scheduling software will enable Banham Poultry to make the best use of all of its drivers and vehicles every day, letting it focus on providing customers with the best possible service.” 

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