Route Scheduling

The best news yet in route management
Frustrated with trying to keep up with routing tasks for your home delivery or single copy distribution operation? RouteSmart software might be the best thing to happen to the newspaper industry since the printing press! RouteSmart routing solutions automate home delivery and single-copy route planning activities reducing the daunting daily administrative burdens associated with maintaining routes.

Automated routing of your delivery force — no driving required.
Stop talking into tape recorders and sending district managers on the road to transcribe route sheets that become outdated the next day! RouteSmart software provides sequenced delivery lists for your carriers and distributors at the push of a button — complete with street-by-street, turn-by-turn directions — without tying up management resources (or relying on carriers to tell you what to do!).

Benefits newspaper organizations large and small
RouteSmart Technologies is a trusted, proven solution provider to newspaper distribution operations around the globe. The RouteSmart package is uniquely tailored to meet the demanding requirements of high-density and neighborhood-oriented home delivery operations. Unique features and benefits of the RouteSmart solution include:

• Automatically sequences and balances routes based on actual street network.
• Incorporates new subscribers and alternate products into the route lists on a daily basis.
• Balance routes based on 4 unique user-specified variables such as total route time, number of subscribers (draw) per route, total number of routes desired within an area/depot, or preferred geographic location for each carrier/distributor based on their familiarity with the area.
• Perform route splits on the fly to better manage down routes or late arriving third-party products at the depot.
• Conduct route costing and carrier subsidy analysis based on planned time and distance for the routes.
• Convert youth routes to motor/adult routes.
• Specify the desired start or end time for the route. Great for meeting new delivery commitments!
• Generate routes that are zone pure (ad zone, postal codes, etc.) for maximizing target marketing effectiveness and advertising revenue.
• Perform home delivery and single copy route planning in one integrated system. Full support for TMC operations also
• Integrates with existing circulation management systems. Supports both full file and transactional file uploads on a daily basis.
• Daily routing performed via an unattended batch routing process for up-to-date delivery lists.
• Secure intranet deployment with browser-based access to reports, sequencing and down route management.
• Rebuilds router/street files automatically via street file transfer back to circulation systems.
• Create multiple routing schemes to account for variability due to seasonal fluctuations of delivery.
• Visualize routes and demographic data on a map of your service area to make better planning decisions for advertising and marketing initiatives.
• Hosted and on-premise solutions available as well as RouteSourcing^TM—our cost effective means of helping you with your routing project work.

For postal and local delivery operations, RouteSmart always delivers.
Industry leaders depend on RouteSmart for achieving maximum efficiency through route optimization software solutions. Global and national operations such as FedEx Home Delivery and the United States Postal Service know that every minute and every mile counts. That’s why both of these organizations rely upon RouteSmart for precise street address-level routing via a toolset that is continually being refined.

RouteSmart for ArcGIS is ideal for route planning and analysis tasks associated with letter carrier delivery, small package delivery, letter box pick-up route planning, and other B2B and B2C distribution operations.

A few of the unique features and benefits of RouteSmart include the following:

• Routing solvers for balancing and clustering workloads based on route time, number of routes desired, volume of mail/parcels, or geographic designation of routes (seed points)
• Models large volumes of address data (tens of thousands of addresses on up!) in a rapid fashion using contemporary computing hardware
• Supports evaluation of operational impacts of service offerings such as drop box location assignment and delivery or pick-up time of service commitment changes
• Create routes based on driving, walking and mixed mode routes including “park and loop” style routing. Constrain loops on either volume of mail or time.
• Automatically determine service modes for areas to be served via walking or driving service using unique “Determine Service Mode” feature.
• Complete support for modeling travel factors such as restricting delivery vehicles from traveling over streets in non-productive (dead-head/wind-shield time) fashion
• Account for and model time of service restrictions (time windows) for insuring unique pick-up and delivery time commitments for each customer.
• Factor for unique service times at each customer based on delivery or pick-up volumes. Additionally, account for extra distance and time spent walking within buildings or large facilities.
• Reduces the number of personnel, vehicles, vehicle miles, nonproductive time and expensive overtime required for operations
• Prints detailed driving directions and maps of service areas, individual routes, itineraries, etc.
• Evaluate multiple “what if” scenarios to quickly analyze and appreciate routing changes to dynamic or fixed routes before they are implemented.
• Complete support for end-user localization and tailoring of the interface. Full support for left or right side driving patterns, miles vs. kilometers distance measurements, etc.
• RouteSmart Macro Language for automating routine routing processes such as importing and exporting data and reports on a daily basis
• Operates in a GIS-based environment to enable powerful, complex spatial analysis of business data and route structures. Uses open ESRI databases natively for storing data and accessing it or exporting it to other applications
• Solvers available for licensing to embed in customized routing applications and business systems.

RouteSmart software operates on top of the ESRI ArcGIS technology platform and uses highly accurate street data from NAVTEQ to power its solution. We maintain official business partner status with both ESRI and NAVTEQ to insure your solution is up to date and able to use their latest technologies. Contact us today to learn more about our experience and capabilities and to match your requirements.

Maintain pace with changes in your meter reading environment.
Today’s meter reading routes are far from static, and “utility logistics” is a complex challenge your field service operation wrestles with daily. Optimizing workloads is a critical process for your utility to keep pace with ever changing requirements for maintaining high levels of service at the lowest possible cost. Fortunately for utilities selecting RouteSmart, the era of struggling each day to keep up with what traditionally has been a manual, time consuming process with route planning is over!

RouteSmart software helps you manage the multiple geographically based work area planning and logistics considerations that all utility operations – whether investor owned or municipal – are expected to keep on top of. Whether it is keeping up with new growth, incorporating a merger or acquisition of another utility, integrating multiple reads, or implementation of automated meter reading technology, RouteSmart is the solution for meeting the most demanding route planning requirements that are out there.

RouteSmart solutions automate route planning tasks found within this ever changing environment. Proven and trusted by utilities for years, RouteSmart Technologies has continually evolved the RouteSmart routing solution for both meter reading route optimization and field service activities. RouteSmart software enables you to quickly and regularly reroute based on up-to-the-moment changes occurring in your service area.

A summary of a few of the unique features of the RouteSmart software and how they can benefit your utility include:

• Uses advanced balancing and sequencing algorithms with unique operating parameters tailored for the needs of meter reading and other field service activities found within gas, electric and water utility industry environments.
• Automatically balance cycle days, driving, walking and combination travel mode routes.
• Automatically determine whether meters should be read via walking or driving service mode based on density of the meters and the desire to minimize overall route time.
• Sequences meters in read order or field service activities in service visit order to minimize time on each route. In walking service mode, specify whether you prefer to “walk right” or “walk left” with respect to which side of the street is desired.
• Integrates route and meter data with handheld and automatic meter reading devices. Full, open standards based import and export support for getting data between RouteSmart and your CIS.
• Convert traditional walk/drive routes to AMR/MMR.
• Reduce number of personnel, number of vehicles, non-productive travel distance, nonproductive time and expensive overtime on the routes.
• Increase meter reading efficiency and achieve per-meter cost-to-read goals.
• Print detailed street-level routing directions along with maps of service areas and individual routes.
• Provide as many computerized operating plans as necessary (seasonal plans for winter versus summer, missed reads, etc.).
• RouteSourcing^TM option available for utilities looking to outsource cycle day and meter route planning tasks.
• Enable “what if” scenarios to quickly evaluate routing changes and anticipate impacts.
• RouteSmart Route Macro Language for automating routine routing tasks associated with importing and exporting data, running the solvers in batch-unattended fashion (great for managing on-demand daily routing processes such as collections!), and outputting reports and maps.
• Integrates with Itron FCS to enable on-demand rerouting of meter data sets.
• Operates in a GIS-based environment and can use existing GIS data sets.

RouteSmart software operates on top of the ESRI ArcGIS technology platform and uses highly accurate street data from NAVTEQ to power its solution. We maintain official business partner status with both ESRI and NAVTEQ to insure your solution is up to date and able to use their latest releases and updates.

Streamlining municipal services operations responsibilities.
RouteSmart Technologies understands the unique needs of the public works environment — because we’ve been serving this industry segment of municipal authorities and private waste collection operators for over 25 years. We pioneered the application of advanced automated routing technology to waste collection vehicle route planning. And we continue to set the standard for contemporary fleet management solutions today for both private and municipal client installations worldwide.

Via a single, integrated software environment that is continuously being updated with new features and functionality, RouteSmart meets your route planning needs comprehensively for:

• Residential and commercial recycling and waste collection routing
• Snowplow territory design
• Street sweeping optimization
• Utility meter reading
• Inspector work area management
• Leaf collection and other routing problems that require every street to be serviced
• Portable toilet service and delivery

RouteSmart solutions integrate seamlessly with ESRI’s ArcGIS family of products and can often use pre-existing GIS data to power the solution. RouteSmart Technologies continuously enhances our product line to maintain compatibility with all new releases of ESRI ArcGIS desktop software and NAVTEQ map data. We maintain official business partner status with both ESRI and NAVTEQ as well as other industry technology suppliers to insure your solution is up to date and able to use their latest releases and updates.

Unique features of the RouteSmart software solution which enable the package to be applied to the aforementioned types of routing problems include:

• Four unique methods to balance routes and cluster workloads including trade-offs between methods (e.g. time of the route vs. capacity of each route). Specify whether you want to balance routes based on time/length of day, a fixed number of personnel or vehicle assets available, a target volume parameter for each route such as number of homes serviced or tonnage of waste collected, or whether you want to manually seed the geographic locations of each route to keep drivers in the same area with which they are familiar.
• Sequencing stops and street block-faces in optimized travel order to minimize time or mileage through the route.
• Factor for time-of-service restrictions at each stop location. Restrict vehicles from servicing stops before, between or after certain times of day.
• All routing calculations performed with side-of-street, address-specific routing precision.
• Support for routing down alleys from which service is performed.
• Comprehensive support for restricting or penalizing all classes of turn movements at an intersection (left, right, straight and u-turn), variable travel speeds to account for physical restrictions and access characteristics of the road, and other travel restrictions such as eliminating non-productive travel through areas or along specific sections of road.
• Multiple volume fields for each stop to model mixed capacities (e.g. recycling volume vs. trash volume).
• Set spreader rates for sanding/gritting operations. Account for input rates for street sweeping operations based on curb-distance serviced.
• Multiple trips to intermediate facilities (e.g. disposal sites, salt dome) throughout the route including the ability for the software to select the best facility to visit.
• Create routes with boundaries that respect major streets and keep whole subdivisions/neighborhoods on the same route.
• Prioritize the order of collection/service between subdivisions, neighborhoods, or other like geographies. Uniquely prioritize the service order of select, individual stops or entire areas of a route to dictate the flow of the sequence through the route. This insures that customers on the route will always be serviced together or in the unique order they are required for service (e.g. service the downtown area first, then the suburban portion of the route).
• Specify maximum amount of time allowed between servicing one side of the street versus the other to minimize return service for same-side only route sequencing practices.
• Support for service day realignments (e.g. changing collection days for residential pick-up) and balancing of workloads with multiple collection or service frequencies (2x, 3x, 4x per week, etc.).
• Comprehensive sets of summary and detail reports and maps for each route showing service order sequence and travel directions. Maps detail travel paths within the route and can be set to various levels of zoom factors/scales for detailing the tour through the route (from route overview map to a map of 1 block-face!).
• RouteSmart Route Macro Language for automating routine routing tasks associated with importing and exporting data, running the solvers in batch-unattended fashion (great for managing on-demand routing processes such as bulky/white-goods collection!), and outputting reports and maps.

As you’ll realize, RouteSmart is the standard for route planning in the challenging realm of both municipal public works and private waste collection. So why not work directly with the authors of the software and not through a third-party reseller who “reps” solutions they do not own nor have influence over with respect to product direction? Contact RouteSmart Technologies today to discuss your route planning needs and how we can bring the solution to you!