While much of the logistics industry’s efforts to accelerate delivery times focuses on optimizing routes, it turns out that’s not where drivers spend most of their time.
In fact, as much as 75% of their workday is dedicated, not to navigating the “last mile,” but the last “100 meters,” waiting at loading docks, searching for parking and interacting with customers, said Chazz Sims, chief executive of Wise Systems, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup that has developed autonomous routing and dispatch software.
Using data and machine learning tools, the company found this kind of service time varies widely depending on the time of day, specific customer, goods in question and delivery person, Sims added. For instance, certain shops get busy serving customers at particular times of the day, or tied up receiving goods from different delivery trucks at others. By spotting those patterns and shifting around schedules, the company was able to cut down delivery times and costs.
Wise Systems’ tools automatically adjust routes, drivers and schedules throughout the day in response to other shifting conditions as well, including weather, traffic and backed-up loading docks. By analyzing data from the fleet of brewing company Anheuser-Busch, one of the startup’s biggest customers, Wise Systems was able to cut late deliveries by 85% and fleet miles by 13%.
The business, founded in 2014, raised $7 million from Google’s AI fund late last year.
