Snows Timber reaps routing rewards

Snows Timber, part of the Bradfords group, has implemented a new routing and scheduling system.

The programme, named Routyn, means the company can deliver the same volume of products with 25% fewer vehicles covering 10% fewer miles.

Snows is the first company in the UK to use Routyn which was developed in Portugal. The system went live in January and Snows has already seen considerable savings in fuel costs and emissions as well as improvements in efficiency. Routyn has enabled Snows to centralise transport planning to give better view of nationwide distribution.

This has resulted in more accurate deliveries, a reduction in human error, and increased ability to meet customers’ bespoke needs.

The efficiency improvements have allowed Snows to refocus resources in their distribution centres enabling them to concentrate on even more activities to benefit the customer. There is now increased capacity to pick and mill product.

Craig Willoughby, supply chain and logistics director of Snows Timber, said: ” We are delighted to be breaking new ground in the UK with our implementation of Routyn. It has delivered a real step change in our transport planning and management capability.

“We have been able to quickly achieve more efficiency using less resources in a way that we simply could not have done using our previous manual planning processes. The implementation highlights our desire to develop better and more integrated sales and operations planning processes to continually improve our service offer to our customers.”