TL6001: Freight Transport Operations

Lesson 3: Freight Transport Planning

Lesson learning outcomes
• Planning requirements at the strategic, tactical and
operational level for a freight transport company
• Regular and irregular factors that affect freight transport
planning
Freight Transport Planning
• Freight transport relies upon the efficiency of the
managers who control it and the resources used to
provide it as a service.
• It is important to examine some of the implications
relating to planning freight transport operations and the
role that effective planning plays in the industry as a
whole.
Key points
• Transport is totally demand-driven; therefore it is
important and vital to our understanding of why issues
such as effective planning are so important
Key points
• All transport users and
customers expect all vehicles or
craft to arrive and depart as
expected and within any clearly
defined parameters relating to
service levels or advertised
schedules
Key points
• For this to happen, the vehicles or craft have to be
positioned in such a way that they can be deployed to
fulfil the desired role
Planning Requirements
• Planning is activity that conducted at all levels in a
business
• Strategic planning
• Tactical planning
• Operational planning
Strategic planning
• At most senior level, directors and senior managers with
longer term planning, focusing on strategic issues, such as:
Strategic planning
• Moving the business forward in an agreed direction.
• Ensuring that the business maintains and grows market
share.
• Ensuring that the business maintains competitive
advantage.
• Product ranges and lifecycles.
• Business sustainability.
• Business ethics.
• Environmental issues.
• Technological and required skills forecasting.
Strategic planning
• Strategic planning usually based on timescales
of between 3, 5 or even 10 years
• Concentrates on business as a whole
• Not concerned with individual issues in
different departments
Strategic planning
• Main purpose to set goals and future direction of business
• Ensure shareholders maintain faith, are suitably rewarded
and continue to support organisation
Tactical planning
• Shorter-term planning, 6-12 months, or even up
to 18 months
• Implements actions required to meet strategic
aims and objectives of organisation
Tactical planning
• Includes such things as:
• Annual budgeting
• Setting annual targets, KPIs and staff development
• Succession planning
• Skills levels
Tactical planning
• Carried out by senior or middle managers who have
responsibilities for overseeing departments
• Often report to Board or senior managers
• So maybe more difficult than strategic planning
• Why?
• Because have to interpret strategic plans and turn them
into activities and actions that can produce the results
required
Operational planning
• Carried out by frontline managers
and supervisors responsible for
particular functions within
departments
• Aimed at ensuring day to day or
week to week operate without
disruption, proper levels of
resources and within budget
Operational planning
• May mean thing such as:
• Considering what vehicles or craft needed for next day or
next week
• What agency staff may be needed in next few days
Operational planning
• In addition, we need to plan for driver/crew payment,
customer invoicing, possible Customs clearance and for
the raising of export/import, collection or delivery notes.
Freight Transport Planning Tools
• Discuss the following different sorts of
operational planning, or planning
tools:
• Route planning
• Scheduling
• Seasonal planning
• Resource implications
Route planning
• Route planning is our first planning tool, as it is the most
commonly recognised by many of us as an actual form of
planning. Route planning involves ensuring that the freight
we move travels by the most appropriate (not always the
most direct or cheapest) route.
• Route planning involves not only planning the physical
route the goods will take, but also needs to consider the
modes to be used, as they will often determine the route
Why undertake transport route planning?

• Large number of delivery points

• Cost of transport continually increasing
• Variable quantities
• Vehicle capacities
• Customer density
• Service level demands are increasing
• Timed deliveries
• Pre- 9.00 a.m. deliveries
Scheduling
• Scheduling is concerned primarily with when the goods
leave and when they arrive at various points along the
route and at the final destination.
• Co-ordinate the departure of the goods from the
manufacturer to arrive at a port or airport in time to be
cleared by Customs and loaded before the aircraft or ship
sails.
• Selecting a route that ensures the goods arrive at various
interchange points in time to be off-loaded and reloaded
for the next leg.
Seasonal planning
• Involves planning resources sufficient for us to either
meet higher levels of demand or avoid unacceptably poor
fleet utilisation rates at times when demand falls off.
• When planning an optimum number of fleet vehicles,
many operators in this sector negotiate off-season
deliveries and off-season bulk, reducing prices to those
customers able to take them.
• In this way they are able to reduce the number of vehicles
required at the busy winter peak time, as some of the
seasonal peak has already been delivered.
Resources
• Need ensure that resources, including human resources,
are in the right place at the right time
• Need to ensure that the correct size, type and number of
resources are provided for the work to be done
• Need ensure any people associated with the work are
adequately trained, skilled and qualified to operate the
vehicles and craft in question.
The travelling salesman
problem asks the following
question:

"Given a list of cities and the

distances between each pair of
cities, what is the shortest
possible route that visits each
city and returns to the origin
city?"

A handbook for travelling

salesmen from 1832 mentions
the problem and includes
example tours through
Germany and Switzerland.
 Pigeon hole sortation

Urgent orders

Saar District Isa district Riffa district Manama district

Computerised Vehicle Routing and Scheduling
(CVRS) software
Simple planning task group exercise
• You are working for a logistics company based
near the port in Bahrain.
• You have a warehouse in Isa Town close to the
Polytechnic.
• You have 2 containers every hour from 06:00 to
18:00 arriving at the port which need to be
collected and delivered to the warehouse.
• How many drivers and trucks do you need ?
Things to consider…
• How long does it take to drive from the Port to
the warehouse and back ?
• How long does it take to load and unload?
• How many hours can your drivers work ?