Automatic Allocations
The Automatic Allocation facility is designed specifically for time tabled runs and operates on the principle of allocating jobs to the most appropriate manifest. It follows that manifests must be created in advance. For example if our jobs are all delivered a day later tomorrow’s delivery manifests must be created if that action is to be allocated.
The Automatic Allocation feature is an optional feature. If you wish to use it you will need to tick the appropriate box in the Global Parameters.
Equipment Capacities
As part of the allocation process the system will check to ensure that enough free capacity is available on the truck. If there is not no allocation will take place. It is important therefore to set capacities against all equipment items that are likely to be used.
The total capacity on a manifest is calculated by summing the capacities of all equipment items (vehicle and trailers) on the manifest. Therefore these values should be set correctly against all items. All fields will be checked so all fields should be set. If a field is felt to be of no consequence (eg: Quantity when this could mean anything from a small parcel to a much larger object) set it to a high value so that it does not impede the allocation process.
Manifests
Manifests must be created in advance of job entry as if not present no automatic allocation will be carried out. The allocation process will inspect each manifest to ascertain;
- The trip will take place on the appropriate date
- The trip will result in the job being delivered to the correct place (done on an Action basis).
- There is enough free capacity for the job.
- If it is a pickup action the trip will have commenced before the job is to be picked up and will finish after the job was to have been picked up.
- If it is a delivery action the trip will have commenced before the job is to be delivered and will finish after the job was to have been delivered.
If more than one manifest matches those conditions the job will be allocated to the earliest one.
If more than one manifest matches those conditions and they commence at the same time the manifest with the highest priority will be used.
If more than one manifest matches those conditions and they commence at the same time and have the same priority level the first one the system found will be used. Normally this will be the one with the lower manifest number.
Priority
The priority level is provided so that you can give preference to one manifest over another. For example you might have a company truck that carries freight into a region but if there is too much freight on any given day you ship the overflow on a sub-contractor. Manifests will be required for both but by giving a higher priority to the company truck this will be filled before any work is given to the sub-contractor.
Each manifest has a default priority of 4 set. This can be over-ridden by the user.
Job Entry
The job entry process remains largely unchanged by use of the Automatic Allocation functionality. The main difference you may notice is the appearance of an Auto Allocate flag on the job entry screen.
This is automatically set to the same value as the Global Parameters are set hence if Global Parameters are ticked so this field will be also. If for any reason you do not want the job subjected to automatic allocation you can untick this field and manual allocation will be enforced.
Other than that there is no change to the job entry process. Upon Save of a job the system will run the automatic allocation process, no user intervention will be required.
This process involves inspection of all manifests that have a status of Booked or In Progress to ascertain the best fit as per the rules outlined under Manifests. The crucial elements are;
- Action collect and delivery addresses must fit the structures used when manually allocating. This means full address matching for line haul actions.
- The collect and deliver times must be correctly set. If these are zero nothing will happen.
- Standard rules apply regarding only one work type per job with the exception of line haul which can be multiple.