St. Austell advances scheduling system

Dorking, UK – Cornwall’s St. Austell Brewery is gearing up its distribution performance with a new automated routing and scheduling system. The independent brewer selected technology from Paragon Software Systems to help streamline and optimise its delivery planning.

St. Austell's investment in the Paragon Multi Depot software is part of plans to reduce the number of its depots in Cornwall from four to one single super distribution centre based in St. Columb Major, with the option to utilise the other depots during peak demand. The company also aims to improve customer service levels and reduce operational costs.

The system is scheduled to go live in the third quarter 2009. During implementation, the brewery is using Paragon Multi Depot to model optimised routes. The software is running alongside the company’s manual system that simply takes customer orders and assigns them to the appropriate delivery round.

With Paragon modelling the best routes, adjustments can be made to the manual system and improvements are already being seen, according to a statement from supplier Paragon.

“The [software] will help us to make huge improvements as we go through implementation. Then we can look forward to switching to full automation once we have all the parameters in place, which should be at the end of the second quarter 2009,” says Mike Voyzey, logistics director, St. Austell Brewery.