In this session we will go over the goals and considerations for Dynamic Scheduling. This will ensure everyone involved is aware of the impact Dynamic Scheduling can have on a route and more importantly an operation.
Set Explicit Goals for Dynamic Scheduling
- Take a driver from 5 days a week to 4. This can very easily occur especially in the beginning when the machines are starving and waiting for Dynamic thresholds to trip.
- Add more machines to the route. In most cases routes can handle more machines when working with Dynamic Scheduling. (Ensure more machines are ready to go, otherwise the driver will slow down)
- Increase dollars per stop to $100-125 (20%) and decrease number of vend visits by 22% for example.
Driver Compensation if applicable
- During this period (Generally 4-6 weeks) seriously consider driver compensation. Early on in the process work will be slow while the machines are starving after introducing thresholds. It can get slow waiting for the machines to catch up. If driver is paid by the hour, he is naturally going to slow down if he sees an easy day. You cannot test DS for a month and expect to see huge time savings if driver compensation during this period is not considered. If the driver is paid on commission, the first 2-3 weeks he will take a huge hit as the machines have most likely been over-serviced. Talk to drivers and make sure they don’t visit unscheduled machines to increase their weekly numbers.
Choosing Routes
- Choose routes that have good pre-kits!!! Routes with historically bad machine inventories/prekit will result in bad Dynamic Scheduling calculations. Unless of course you’re using wireless devices in machines which will overwrite incorrect ADS calculations.
Considerations
- If you currently use Services and Collects, you will be switching to collects only with Dynamic Scheduling. If driver over-rides on the HH and changes it to a service, the DS expected cash will be from the last VV (service or collect). Note: Cashless usage will have an impact as the money threshold will be lower on money in machine. Services may be more common place.
- Everyday machines do not need to be put on Dynamic Scheduling. They can remain on static. You can still view their status in Dynamic Scheduling and make a change to the schedule if you wish. Route can support static and Dynamic POS’s. Some POS might not make sense to put on Dynamic Scheduling like food and coffee machines.
- In order to stretch time between services you may need to double up product (minimally the top 2 products). Try to identify your best sellers as soon as possible.
- Machines with volatile traffic and constantly changing ADS are difficult to schedule accurately without the aid of a wireless device. Dynamic Scheduling will react the same way the pre-kits do on those machines.
- Supervisor needs to force machine inventories on a regular basis to ensure accuracy of the ADS data. The Cash Accountability report (Product O/S) will also tell us if good inventories are being maintained.
- Dynamic Scheduling pushes you to your limits on sellouts. If 2 sellouts is your limit Dynamic Scheduling will try to get the machine at 2 sellouts. This is magnified when new products are introduced, or new foot traffic occurs and product sells faster. ADS takes a few visits to catch up. Be ready to see an increase in sellout percentages.
- Start with one route and learn from it. After a couple week and best practices have been worked out then starting adding more routes.
- If you want to take it slow, you can keep POS on a static schedule and use Dynamic Scheduling to see the performance and then decide if they want to adjust the static schedule. Do not do this for very long or on a LOT of machines, as it becomes a lot of work in Dynamic Scheduling if you are making many changes manually