If you're still one of the few laggards resisting digital transformation, you need to read this article. Learn about the path to logistical success

The profile of new users in the growing digital era stimulates the fact that companies are being pushed towards digital transformation (also known as logistics 4.0), in order to adapt their businesses to the new social, business and technological reality. In this way, users have adopted digital culture in their environment thanks to the incorporation of new tools, which often allow greater speed, efficiency and even user autonomy.

For all these reasons, most companies in practically any sector have already begun to adapt to this new era. This transformation triggers new business opportunities, revenues and even increased efficiency. In this way, all those companies that are successfully participating in the digital transformation process will be better positioned in the market given the competitive advantages compared to other non-digitized companies.

How to apply digital transformation strategies in logistics

Below we show you what are the most important aspects for proper business digitalization in logistics. All initiatives must take into account the particular situation of each company considering the difficulties it faces, the opportunities it has in its sector and the objectives it sets itself. Therefore, it is advisable to go step by step:

Strategy: it is very important that the company's strategy is aligned with the challenges of digitalization. Digitalization can be a very important lever in the strategy because if you only invest in technology without clear guidance, the result is usually not as expected.

Starting point and objectives: it is necessary to carry out a prior analysis to assess the current state of the areas most affected in the company due to the imminent digitalization.

Partida Budgetary for digitalization: the company's internal procedures or bureaucratisms should not be an impediment to making the investments in technology necessary for digital transformation. One of the pillars of digitalization lies in the simplification and automation of many processes, which is why it is often welcome.

Talent 4.0: it is essential to bet and invest in those employees who have specialized training in supply chain management, in addition to also having advanced skills in software and digitalization.

Metrics and KPIs: it is essential to analyze each stage and measure its results (KPI) in order to make the best decisions that increase the efficiency of our company.

LEAN method: Prototype, measure, and iterate. It is necessary not to approach the project in a very ambitious way if the company does not have the human capital with sufficient experience in this type of project. It is preferable to start with small projects that give confidence in the execution and management of change in the company itself.

Technological tools: key factors of logistics 4.0

Once analyzed what are the strategies to be implemented towards logistics 4.0, it is now necessary to know those technological tools and key factors in order to carry it out.

Cloud Computing: Cloud computing technology is a pillar of digital transformation since it allows you to store data online, thus allowing different sectors or departments to share information without the need for a software or storage system.

Management software and systems: The implementation of new technological solutions (software) that help to systematize management will promote the automation of some processes that until now were mostly manual, such as planning delivery routes. Thanks to the use of our tool SmartMonkey Planner efficient route planning is already a reality for many small and large companies, such as the case of Alfil Logistics or Pink Basket, among others. Do you want to know more about the benefits of intelligent route planning? Read the following article and discover the success in Success Story: Alfil Logistics — Alfilxpress.

Big Data: With the incorporation of Big Data, companies have the possibility of being able to work with a large volume of data in a much more strategic and analytical way, thus allowing them to more easily forecast market demands and trends or transport weaknesses and needs, among others.

Internet of Things: It allows the interconnection between the different items in the same system in order to act collaboratively and intelligently. This, within the logistics chain, represents a great benefit already implemented in a large part of the process chain.

Advantages of digital transformation logistics

Automation in logistics processes: Especially in inventory, warehousing and route planning, among other processes.

Extensive data collection across the supply chain: measurable and analyzable

Predictive maintenance based on collected data

Advanced control in all processes and digitized quality system

Management system for digital performance

Bigger and better user experience — end customer

In short, the adaptation of the logistics industry to this new digitalization is crucial for the evolution of the sector, not only because of the threats to those companies that are unable to adapt, but also because of all the competitive advantages that will be obtained by all those companies that know how to take advantage of existing opportunities.

Do you want to know more trends in the logistics market? We recommend that you read the article Green Logistics: discover what it is and how to join the current market trend to learn about the industry's latest complaint.

If you want to be part of the digital transformation and technological advances in logistics, join Planner and reinforce the scalability of your business.

Sant Jordi is always a special day, books, roses, queues and people, lots of people. Everyone is out on the street, enjoying a magical day for both children and adults. It is the day of the year when the most books are sold, 7.5% of annual sales In the city of Barcelona.

This year will be special. We'll have to spend it at home, enjoying a good read, our recommendation for these days The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. This year we will save ourselves the hassle of Las Ramblas and we will have to buy the roses online. Without a doubt, a special year.

We want to take advantage of this important date to see the success of initiatives that, in a normal year, would hardly have achieved such overwhelming success.

One of our customers Santjordiacasa.com is using Highway as a tool to optimize the distribution of roses on such a special date as Sant Jordi.

Thanks to the power of the Highway route planner, they have been able to grow in deliveries and reach customers that would have been impossible for them before.

Like them, hundreds of other customers are entering a world such as home delivery. A channel that had often been completely forgotten. Thanks, or unfortunately, COVID-19 has forced the launch of new marketing channels such as Ecommerce and its own distribution and home delivery.

We are seeing this in our traditional customers, distribution companies to the HORECA channel that are converting to home distributors overnight.

Pastry shops such as Cropics they were able to deliver all the Easter monkeys in record time and have the detail of leaving a monkey at my wife's grandmother's house 😁. These types of details make being able to help small businesses make you proud of the work you do and of seeing how you can help more people around you.

We are in a very difficult time for many companies and families. There is little help to get through this crisis and reaching those people we can help is always a challenge. I encourage you to share our story, the story of our users and customers, companies that are embarking on a new adventure, delivery. Without experience, without processes, but with a desire to fight and face the corona, you are not alone.

We won this together.

The distribution on demand is an industry that is growing at a very high speed. New companies appear every day, especially in the market for food, beverages and deliveries of perishable products. And the competition is wild. Efficiency is a key metric in the “I want it all and I want it now” era and the most critical part is what happens from when a new order is placed until it is delivered.

Today I want to focus on the problem of sending new orders, that is, how to decide which courier service the order should be assigned to when an order enters the system. This is because the dispatch today is not addressed systematically. Optimizing the dispatch system can minimize delivery time and improve customer satisfaction.

The operating paradigm of companies that deliver on demand can be divided into two different types:

1. Operations based on a single warehouse are those operations focused on a single tank. This warehouse has several dealers and the programming is done once to obtain an order list; usually grouping orders by area. Amazon Prime is a good example of this paradigm.
2. Operations based on multiple warehouses are those operations that rely on choosing the order in one of the multiple warehouses and delivering it to a customer. In this case, the delivery people are scattered around the city, and once a new order arrives, it is assigned through a shipping process to one of the multiple delivery people. Companies such as Uber, Just Eat, Delivero, etc. operate this way.

The problem of dispatching is solved more or less satisfactorily in the first scenario thanks to the possibility of linking together a list of deliveries and considering it as a Traveling Seller Problem (Traveling Salesman Problem) with some pre-clustering restrictions (OK, I know that TSP is an expensive problem, but... come on, it's about Amazon).

On the contrary, in the second scenario, it is not so clear that the problem is being optimally addressed. How can a new incoming order be added to a running scenario? There are tons of variables to consider:

• Can the courier make multiple collections before starting to deliver?
• Can an already assigned order be reassigned to another courier service?
• Do all orders have the same priority? (for example, all orders must be delivered no later than 30 minutes after placing them)
  Do orders need to be delivered by a particular vehicle?
• ...

Modeling this scenario can be quite challenging, and that's why SmartMonkey has been working on this problem for a while. We call our solution Online Programming Optimization Model (OSOM) (Yes, branding isn't one of our strengths 😅, but phonetically it sounds like “incredible” and that's pretty fun). OSOM can model business restrictions and find a feasible solution to the dispatching problem.

In the simulation below, we have modeled a world where:

• A courier service can be assigned multiple pickups and deliveries at the same time
• and the first next service of each messaging service is fixed and cannot be reassigned in subsequent iterations.

The visualization contains twenty iterations of the world divided into two steps:

1. New incoming services are marked in gray.

2. Services are dynamically assigned to deliverers to optimize overall delivery time.