Visual Planning - a tool for increasing fill rate in logistics distribution

Paper in proceeding, 2007

With increasing prices for fossil fuels and public demand for less environmental impact, the importance of transport planning in order to reduce the total driving distance is increasing. Traditionally, research suggests mathematical optimization models as planning tools to achieve higher filling rate for transports. This research aims at revealing the planning improvement of using visual transport planning where optimizers are unsuitable. This work contains a literature study, a case study and a prototype evaluation. The literature study was carried out in the areas of transport planning, optimization and visualization. To test the feasibility of visual planning enhancing the transport planning process, a prototype was developed, built on input from the staff at AAK and Foodtankers, applying the theory of visualization. Planning performance data for a test period was collected and compared with data from the same period other years indicating a 5-9% fill rate increase.