TNT Post is making use of RouteSmart planning software to roll out its end-to-end mail delivery service in the UK.
The company has been providing the full collection-sorting-and-delivery chain for mail in West London and the Victoria area of Central London since April 2012, and has since expanded to South-West London.
Last week TNT announced plans to expand to Manchester, where the 1,000 jobs already created in London will be matched.
The technology behind the new services includes the planning software tool RouteSmart for ArcGIS, which has helped create the delivery rounds for TNT.
The system combined GIS technology with postal service specific algorithms to develop the most efficient routes using Ordnance Survey maps and the national postcode database, Postcode Address File (PAF).
“RouteSmart has been instrumental in the set-up of the E2E project at TNT Post and has helped facilitate the creation of postal delivery rounds with specific service targets,” said TNT Post rounds and mapping manager Ben Schooling.
The RouteSmart system makes use of Ordnance Survey mapping and post code information
“We planned to use PAF/Ordnance Survey as the base data files so needed software that was compatible and we wanted to be able to sequence the items to household level using the sortation machines which RouteSmart can do. The ability to incorporate OS updates whilst maintain the sequence of the original round was a challenge and required further development. The improvements to the Insert solver has now facilitated this.”
ISL
Romsey-based Integrated Skills Limited (ISL), the company that supplied the RouteSmart system to TNT, said it has now created 2,370 rounds for TNT Post.
The system also helped determine locations for delivery units, and customized delivery instruction booklets for delivery staff.
James Holt, the GIS technical director at ISL, said his project team worked with TNT to configure RouteSmart and import the relevant maps and data sets, as well as interfacing with sorting machines and mentoring the TNT route planning team.
He said the TNT team was quick at learning the system.
“As the TNT planning team became more conversant with the RouteSmart software the time taken to produce routes from scratch was reduced dramatically but at the same time the integrity and quality of the routes remained high,” said Holt.
ISL is now proposing a centralised database for storing and managing source data for the service.
This should help TNT Post to scale up much more effectively, said Schooling. The company intends to establish a more nationwide service using a total of 20,000 postal delivery staff by 2015.