Eurasian Foods Corporation JSC (EFC) is one of the leading food producers in Kazakhstan and Central Asia and the undisputed leader in the fat and oil industry with more than 3000 employees. The company produces more than 250 types of products, such as: mayonnaise, ketchup, sunflower and butter, spreads, sauces, seasonings, spices. The production capacity is over 150 thousand tons of finished products per year. The company has more than 20 branches in Kazakhstan, it has representative offices in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. About 100 thousand kg of products are delivered daily within only Almaty alone, which is the largest and most populous city in the country. When it comes to such volumes, it is quite laborious to load transport and build routes efficiently.
When planning routes, logisticians spent a lot of time solving the problem of traffic optimization. At the same time, it is very difficult to take into account all the really existing parameters and requirements that were imposed on vehicles, for instance: working hours of facilities, characteristics of vehicles, routes, speed on highways and other factors. The lack of visualization of the planned delivery routes made it difficult to choose the most effective solution.
Given the high variability of orders received for delivery, it is almost impossible to solve the problem of building optimal routes without specialized computer programs. It also makes it difficult for new drivers to navigate unfamiliar territories. Before each trip, the delivery service specialists help us to build the best route, thereby saving delivery time. All of the above factors affected the speed of delivery provided by Eurasian Foods Corporation to its customers.
“Having a set of electronic applications, determining the most optimal delivery method is not an easy task. Even in a small town it is difficult to draw the correct route. As a result, we had uneven working schedules of forwarders and not optimal traffic load. We have applied traditional approaches and delivery methods used by FMCG companies. Eventually, the company's management came to the conclusion that we need a modern automation system for existing business processes. Thanks to Relog, we got a tool that visualizes the work of a logistician on a city map ".
Denis Gurban
Head of Information Technology Department, EFC
The implementation of the program yielded results in the first month. With optimal route planning, the entire scope of work was evenly distributed among all forwarders, work schedules and delivery times were stabilized. In addition, the total number of transport units of our fleet decreased by two immediately. Route planning software allowed to bring the work of the distribution system to a new level and to increase the load of transport by 10%. Currently, Eurasian Foods Corporation has successfully integrated Relog program in 21 cities in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Relog redesigned its software according to EFC needs
Eurasian Foods Corporation joined Relog in 2018. Initially, the software solution was aimed at automating courier services; at this time, the developers were just starting to master the distribution direction. And the system was not quite suitable for a fat and oil holding.
The specifics of EFC work was that the orders collected by sales representatives should be grouped into optimal flights, then the received summary data is transferred to the warehouse. After assembling the products in the warehouse, sales documents are created, which will be delivered by the forwarder. These new documents must be submitted to Relog for rerouting without losing the link to the forwarder. The route planning software was not designed to work this way, but EFC and Relog worked together to come up with a solution.
“We needed a fairly flexible tool and Relog's developers redesigned the software for us. In general, they did their job quite well, taking into account all our requirements and comments”.
Denis Gurban
Head of Information Technology Department, EFC
Originally, the Relog program was supposed to integrate with external systems. But taking into account the significant volumes of transportation by Eurasian Foods Corporation, closer integration with the accounting system was needed. Manual transfer of orders from one system to another by a logistics specialist did not solve the tasks set by the customer for the Relog team. In Almaty alone, about 1000 orders were processed per day. Thus, with the help of Relog’s specialists a special module was made for integration with the 1C accounting software and finally, the program was launched.
Creating Additional KPIs
Before, Eurasian Foods Corporation could track the route of transport with GPS trackers installed in vehicles. However, in order to check the most comfortable route, it was necessary to open one program, then find the planned route in another program and compare the two tracks. In this case, the Relog route planning software allows you to see the real and planned routes on one map. Also, the program has additional leverage on delivery specialists. Now you can see what time the driver arrived at the point of sale, how much time he spent serving each client.
The head of Information Technology Department at EFC, Denis Gurban, noted that the delivery routes have become more transparent, the executive discipline of employees has moved to a new quality level.
“At the moment, we believe that the integration of the logistics optimization program was the right and timely decision. Summing up, building routes with the help of the software became easier, less machines are involved, the performance of forwarders improved, the load per unit of transport became more even, the level of our delivery services increased significantly. Relog is actively developing towards the analytical part. We're not big fans of cloud services, Relog is one of the first cloud solutions we use. We hope that the new features that will appear in the program, thanks to other companies, will be used by us too".
Denis Gurban
Head of Information Technology Department, EFC
