Delivery Planning and Management System (DMS) focuses on enabling effective labour productivity management. It encompasses analysis, planning recommendations and a range of tools and methods to achieve the improvements needed to underpin effective delivery productivity.

Our experience shows the challenges for delivery typically include:

• Sustained cost reduction and ongoing cost containment
• Customer service delivery improvements
• Better and ongoing matching of labour resources to volumes
• Fair work distribution
• More efficient processes
• Better management of low performance

DMS is a specialist production management package that enables postal organisations to accurately measure their delivery business, by monitoring and providing insight and answers to those challenges.

DMS -A Vital Tool for Achieving Improvements

The Delivery Planning and Management System (DPMS) enables volume-driven postal businesses to achieve effective productivity management through the matching of labour resources to volume, using:

• Models to calculate workload
• Models to design and re-configure delivery routes and equalise delivery officer and delivery office workload
• Planning tools utilising historic, current and predictive volume information and scenarios
• Cost and productivity measures.

Key components of DMS

The key components of DMS are a planning and productivity management system to help manage resources and costs. This is made up of three key activities:

• Delivery route definition
• Workload calculation
• Productivity management, including planning and reporting.

Delivery route definition

DMS requires measures of the following route parameters:

• Delivery distance (both street line and off street distance)
• Dead distance (where there is no physical address point)
• Number and type of delivery points
• Terrain characteristics

Workload calculation

DMS accurately determines hours of work, encompassing inside processes and outside delivery, for each postal route. The calculations take account of the dynamic relationship between volume and route variability. They are effective for all modes of delivery (walk, cycle, motorcycle or van) and for all delivery routes (urban and rural).

DMS is a unique system for managing productivity because it is dynamic – it can calculate standard hours of workloads for delivery offices, teams of postal delivery officers, based on the volume to be processed and delivered on a daily basis.

Productivity management

Planning

• DMS uses forecast volumes to calculate hours of work and the required numbers of delivery officers
• Forecast resource estimates can be used for both short-term and long-term planning
• This allows operational managers to plan and make objective decisions about their resource requirements

Reporting

• Delivery office managers and team leaders can input data, modify resource estimates and access relevant reports
• Production management reports can be generated (daily, weekly, monthly, year to date, yearly, year-by- year comparisons) at all relevant levels (team, branch, area, region, national), on matters such as:

-staff productivity

-resource levels

-unit costs

-key performance indicators (KPI)

-resource forecasting

Benefits to your business

Introducing DMS will provide information to enable more effective decision-making, allowing:

• Benchmarking of change and innovation
• Identification of opportunities for improvement and development
• Continual improvement of measurable productivity and targets.

Delivery managers will, in turn, be able to:

• Match resources to volume to ensure accurate staffing levels
• Equalise delivery route workload
• Manage resource planning to cater for peaks and troughs, and set roster hours
• Plan and budget for employee’s leave. workloads for delivery offices, teams or postal delivery officers, based on the volume to be processed and delivered on a daily basis.

Results encompass:

• Reducing overtime costs
• Reducing overall staffing levels
• Maintaining or improving service standards.

Postal Healthchecks

Assessing Postal Operations

Postal Healthchecks are a key to cost control, operational effectiveness, service performance improvement, revenue maintenance and growth.

Cost-effective, service-oriented mail and parcel processing, delivery and transport operations, and operational structures are key prerequisites for postal organisations to increase revenue and growth.

We have developed practical tools for assessing the health of postal operations with an approach focused on identifying critical issues and opportunities for improvement, to meet the real needs of individual customer organisations.