The strategy considered is divided into two fronts; One front looks for reducing waste encountered in the
process when the vehicles are not in transit, that is while they are waiting to be loaded or unloaded, etc. The
other front of attack regards the waste associated with the transport of items.
The aim of the not-in-transit waste elimination strategy is to minimize the waiting time that the
transportation unit takes before it leaves de distribution center, and that spent after serving the clients,
during the journey or shift. The ideal would be to start the shift with the unit loaded with goods and finish it
with the vehicle in the DC ready to be unloaded. The strategy consists merely of several process
improvement projects for those activities that could not be done without the driver and his assistant. Those
that could, were made external to the journey, i.e. the loading of the product. The overall impact of the
projects is a reduction of time devoted to these sub-processes of the order of 49%, equivalent to 74
minutes. This time savings is transformed into more time in transit of the vehicles.
The elimination of all concepts of in-transit waste identified is done through the implementation of a
routing support system. With this system, the concept of fixed routes is eliminated for that of dynamically
redefining daily routes according to customer daily demands. Given the complexity of the distribution
network, the company decided to acquire UPS Roadnet transportation suite and implement the concept of
distribution territories. Validation of the potential benefits that could be achieved by implementing this
system was carried out with samples of customer of different characteristics (convenience stores,
supermarkets, restaurants, and so on). Table 1 shows the impact achieved by applying Roadnet. The
number of route-days is decreased by 6.3% in this sample. In transit journey time was reduced by 15%,
capacity utilization increased 61.3% and further, route load became more balanced. The impact of the time
freed from reducing Not-in-transit waste was also quantified. About half of the total benefit achieved is due
to its removal.