Example: orders that keep coming in

The situation

A distributor's orders come in all the time from their order system. Many customers order on the morning of the delivery. Anything ordered before 09:00 must still go out today, but trucks have to start loading long before then.

So the day is planned in rounds. Each round adds to what's already planned. You never start over.

The words used here are explained in Day plan concepts.

The day in short

  • The evening before: plan the trucks that leave first.
  • Early morning: plan everything that came in overnight.
  • 09:00: plan the last orders. They fill the space left on trucks that are already loading, without moving what's already on them.

The evening before

  1. Open tomorrow's day plan. The orders captured so far are already there.
  2. Click Select and tick the jobs for the far-away area.
  3. Click Optimise, and save the route in the planner.
  4. Do the same for any other area that has to leave early.
  5. Print these routes' trip sheets, so the warehouse can start picking tonight. Use the ⋮ menu next to Planned routes.

Early morning

  1. Look at what came in overnight. New orders show up as jobs that aren't on a route yet.
  2. Tick those jobs and click Optimise. Last night's routes stay as they are. Save in the planner.
  3. Print the trip sheets for the new routes.

While the trucks load

  1. When a truck starts loading, set its route to Loading. You do this with the stage button on the route's card, which says Planning ▾.
  2. Every stop on it now counts as loaded, and gets a small parcel on its circle. From now on, nothing on this truck will be moved to another truck.
  3. Orders keep arriving. They show up as jobs that aren't on a route yet.

At 09:00

  1. With nothing ticked, click Optimise. It plans all the remaining orders. They go into the space left on the trucks that are loading, and onto the trucks that haven't started yet. Whatever is already on a loading truck stays on it, although the order of its stops may change. Save in the planner.
  2. Tell the loaders what's new. On a loading truck, a new stop has no parcel yet, and the route's card counts what's left, for example "5 of 7 loaded".
  3. As each new order goes on the truck, open its stop and turn on Loaded.
  4. Print the final trip sheets.

When the trucks leave

  1. Set each route to Dispatched as its truck leaves. If you forget, it happens by itself at the first delivery.
  2. Follow the trucks on the Live page.

What you get

  • Every order placed before the cut-off goes out today.
  • What's already on a truck stays on that truck. Late orders only use the space that's left.
  • An order that isn't planned yet is easy to spot: the top of the page counts how many jobs are on a route.