In the mid 2000s, we were a company who was not particularly focused on harnessing new technologies. We wanted to direct our capital to purchase additional trucks and plants. Our family-owned ready-mix business had grown to over 75 trucks across four plants, surpassing 500,000+ cy per year. The local building boom, consisting of big box warehouses to residential units, and anything else in between, fueled our growth. It often felt like the business was running us and that we were consumed by an ever-expanding world of ready-mix chaos.
Here was our high-level setup at that time:
- Mobile data terminals (MDT) for truck statuses, no GPS
- Kore Data Systems dispatch software
- Command Alkon version 4 batch panels, non-interfaced
- DTN Weather Radar
- Two-way traditional radio system
- Nextel for internal ops communications
"Waste of Money"
I can vividly recall when we discovered that one of our competitors used a phone system that drivers could call after 5 PM each day to obtain their start time for the next day. This was hysterical to us, literally. We will revisit this point…
We also chose not to interface our dispatch environment with our plant’s batch panels. It was way too expensive, after all, $15,000 if I recall at the time to get this installed. Rather than spend those dollars on the interface, our expectation was for the plant operators to manually key in each load’s ticket information into the load index, after a dispatcher printed the ticket to the plant. Then, plant operators would be responsible for manual truck sequencing, all before the load was even weighed up. That was to the tune of over 60,000 loads annually. Each…and…every…load.
There are plenty of other examples to pour over; my point is we thought we had this nailed. We did not consider our operational processes at a granular level to improve ourselves; we just “shipped it.” It wasn’t until we were acquired in 2005 where I had my ah-ha moment. A consultant, studying our business post-acquisition, asked me, “Why don’t you schedule concrete orders by the minute?” My reaction was not great, after all, we had the process nailed. Turned out, it was time to swallow my pride and to open my mind up to something that was not even realized… “The power of the minute.”
The Landscape
In previous blogs, I have explained that best-in-class ready mix operators understand that they must offer a great product and provide a high level of service. This is clear and always has been. However, markets tend to seek “competitive” equilibrium. Competition is tough, and any advantages are eventually matched in any market, at least to a certain level. Advantages shift to focusing on how well the entity can perform operationally.
A Start Time Analysis
The cost of an operational minute can vary, assume that it is $1.50. As mentioned earlier, our company believed that transmitting next day start times over the two-way radios by simply announcing “same times tomorrow” was the way to do it. After all, it was busy, so there were loads for everyone in the morning. We scheduled four drivers per fifteen-minute slot, per plant. It was “Just the way we always did it.” This cost millions of dollars, literally, over a period of years.
There were days when we had ten trucks in line to load, first round. In the example above on the right, when scheduling concrete orders improperly, trucks will back up at the plant. 105 minutes of delay just in the first hour of production. That adds up to big profits and productivity losses. The example on the left is with the correct system and order settings, utilizing a first-round report, at four-minute intervals. The solution begins with analyzing, then streamlining your processes.
Get Your Settings Correct
To have best-in-class scheduling, you’ll need to schedule drivers to the minute, as referenced above. No need to round to the nearest five or ten minutes, just schedule to the minute. To be successful, you will first need to verify in the systems settings area of your dispatch module the following:
- Confirm the plant production rate.
- Confirm post load washdown time.
- Confirm wait to load and unload minutes (order entry level).
- Confirm washout time on job.
You should run historical data to obtain your true performances, then enter those averages in your system settings. This data is the foundation of scheduling concrete orders more effectively and getting those trucks out of the yard and delivering on time. You will also need to drill down on the order-level data, including accurate travel times to jobs and spacing/unload rates.
If you are working with single load orders, run historical data on average unload time by load sizes, in one-yard increments, and print off a sheet for the dispatchers to use for accurate order entry. Combining these system settings with good order data allows for a solid “first round report” that will generate suggested start times for the next day.
A well-scheduled first round will put you into a position to not only be on time, but to position you very well for subsequent loads for the trucks. Once the first round of trucks is out, we can turn to other opportunities for capturing lost minutes.
Next month, I will focus on real-time data flow and using it to track KPIs and other actionable insights.