Reducing Vehicle Fleet Costs: A Case Study

This article tells the story of the very successful implementation of a computer delivery planning system for daily route scheduling. The system was installed in early 1984 at a distribution centre of one of the largest supermarket groups in the UK, Argyll Stores, and helped to achieve a vehicle fleet reduction of almost 40 per cent. The article concentrates on how this success was achieved. After outlining the background, we describe the advance planning and preparation for implementation. The difficulties and setbacks which occurred after going “live” are detailed together with how they were overcome.