WHAT CAN O.R. DO FOR YOU?

Success Stories

We've put together a library of dozens of brief O.R. cases for you to browse or search by industry, functional area, or benefit.

Food Distribution

• 3663 First for Foodservice is the UK's leading foodservice wholesale distributor and provides dedicated frozen, fresh, chilled and full multi-temperature delivery with flexibility, speed of response and local knowledge that is vital to its customers. 38 depots serve up to 53,000 customers.
• The Brakes Group is the UK's leading supplier to the catering industry. Operating in an extremely competitive industry, there is constant pressure on margins and Brakes also has a sharp focus on increasing efficiency throughout the supply chain to reduce its impact on the environment.

Retail distribution

• Each night, Menzies Distribution processes approximately 1,500 tonnes of newspapers and magazines through 36 depots, and then out to over 21,000 retail premises throughout the UK. It is the only wholesaler to do so on a nation-wide basis.
  The operation delivers over 6 million newspapers and magazines per day against a very tight turnaround time. Products arriving from publishers through the early hours are cross-docked, picked and packed to the copy, then consolidated for delivery to the retailer. High speed, good organisation and overall efficient distribution service is paramount when the product has such a short shelf life.

Transport

• The Delivery Co. is the UK logistics operating company for the PaperlinX Group providing a dedicated in-house logistics service for its three UK Paper Merchants. Vehicle routing software has been used on a consolidation and rationalisation project which has cut the kilometres travelled by the group fleet by 25%.
• By using supply chain management techniques, Fuchs Lubricants (UK) PLC has reduced the time spent on route planning by over 85% and improved on all of its Key Performance Indicators as well as achieving major efficiencies in vehicle preparation and compartment washing.
• Reynolds Logistics, Ireland's leading liquid distribution company, has integrated a leading vehicle routing solution into its overall supply chain management. Its core competencies are the contract distribution and storage of bulk, both in tankers and Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC), and packed lubricants.
• Wincanton is a European leader in the design and delivery of advanced supply chain solutions. Wincanton operates a contract on behalf of a major petroleum company to deliver packed goods such as cans of oil to garage forecourts and petrol stations, and bulk lubricants to car workshops, dealerships and big manufacturing plants. Daily planning >> Strategic planning >>

A few other examples of the value you’ll find:

• The dental profession used O.R. to improve its workforce planning, to ensure that particular anticipated needs were met by appropriately qualified staff numbers.
• A regional bakers used O.R. to identify redundant effort in data collection and to provide a solution as to how the existing shop floor communications could be improved
• Ford used O.R. to optimise the way it designs and tests vehicle prototypes, saving well over £150 million.
• A hospital called in O.R. consultants to reduce outpatient waiting times. Using a simulation model, the O.R. team developed a new system that cut waiting times by as much as 50%
• The Department of Health used O.R. for strategic and scenario planning work that led to the creation of NHS Direct. They followed up this work with computer modelling to assist in designing the helpline call centre network.

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Benefit	Select Benefit Improve Customer Service Increase Efficiency Increase Revenue Optimize Resource Use Reduce Cost
Function	Select Function Balance Scorecard Capital Budgeting Cutting and Packing Data Mining Decision Support Systems Finance Function Inventory Logistics Transportation Market Research Optimisation Modelling Personnel Scheduling Planning Portfolio Management Pricing Production Production Scheduling Revenue Management Routing and Scheduling Supply Chain Management
Industry	Select Industry Agriculture Auto and Vehicle Aviation Broadcasting Catalogs Computers Electronics Facilities Management Finance Food Government Manufacturing Military Nuclear Weapons Package and Freight Delivery Policing Public Utilities Retailing Telecommunications Transportation

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