The 3 benefits of Autonomous Inventory Routing (AIR)
What are current AIR platforms, based on a new generation of algorithms, capable of and what’s in it for fuel companies and retailers?
"AI will not replace you at your job but will change the way you work," I read somewhere recently. It’s an interesting statement from my perspective as a fuel delivery planner. To what extent can my work be automated? And is that something to look forward to or not?
I have now worked for two years as a fuel delivery planner at Bottomline, planning deliveries to hundreds of fuel stations, for several customers throughout Europe. My background was in logistics, although planning was new to me. I liked Bottomline as a company, its atmosphere, and the possibility of working from home a lot of the time. But what I have enjoyed most so far is the work itself. Planning, at its core, is about solving puzzles. And each time all the pieces fall into place – in other words, when all transports have been neatly planned in an efficient way and all fuel stations receive their drops on time – you get the same sense of satisfaction that you get from solving a challenging problem.
The question is, though, how long I will be fitting together that puzzle myself. As planning software gets smarter, easier to use, and may even go fully autonomous, it will make planning more efficient. But as it leaves fewer problems for me to solve, will I still enjoy it? And will I even have a job as a planner, a few years from now? These questions came up some time ago when I heard that we would transition to a new application for inventory routing, BX, which was being developed by our own software department at Bottomline.
News like that will always be met with certain reservations from the people who have to use the software. As a planner, you have an established way of working. The current system may not be perfect, but once you’ve been through the learning curve, you know how it works and how to work around any quirks and problems it may have. Of course, every new software will promise it’s going to make life easier for you. However, I’ve often found it introduces new problems as well. Little things perhaps, that developers may have overlooked or underestimated, but which can be a real nuisance in your day-to-day work.
In this case, however, I had the advantage of being invited to work with the developers, along with some of my colleagues. Which meant that our perspective, insights, and practical concerns as end-users took center stage right from the outset. And as the new platform took shape, of course, I was still using the old program, so I was in a good position to see whether it really would be an improvement.
And let me tell you: it is. For a start, because the new interface is much more visual and intuitive. The new design focuses on the functionality you need 99% of the time and has replaced huge tables and menus full of options you rarely use with a clean, streamlined interface. It has incorporated maps that display routes and the real-time location of trucks. I can adjust a planning by simply dragging color-coded bars across a neat chart that visualizes all routes. To me, it feels as if I’ve moved from Windows 98 to the latest Apple operating system, in one massive step.
What are current AIR platforms, based on a new generation of algorithms, capable of and what’s in it for fuel companies and retailers?
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