STUDENTS' CORNER - 175

Solution provider for route scheduling issue at work (Representational Image)

 

 Scheduling means planning the activities in such a way that there is no confusion in communication. Scheduling is required where many are involved and it becomes an absolute useful act when many activities are also involved. An easy example will be the time-table of the trains, of the buses etc that arrive and leave a particular place. And the time-table of the trains, so to say, is a customer-friendly document.

 

For any company scheduling is inevitable. Here, we are concerned with the products ready for transport to the destination, that is, the customers. Scheduling saves time, energy and money as well.  A misspent product is not wanted by the customer and it comes back to you and you have to send it properly so that the customer who needs it gets it. Thus, without proper scheduling no effective commercial activities can be carried out. Scheduling ensures that all essential activities are well-taken care of.

 

Experts talk of types of scheduling with which we need not concern ourselves here.

 

Route scheduling also involves the same principle of cost effectiveness.

 You choose a route that does not cost you more than necessary. Suppose you have to send your product to a place very far off, say, a distance of a few hundred kms has to be covered in time for the product to reach the destination. Of course, you can send the product on your vehicle to cover the entire distance. On the other hand, there is a transport facility from another company at a middle point and from there if you send the product in that different transport, you save some money, naturally you have to choose that option. You send your own vehicle upto that middle point and then utilize the transport of another company which carries a lot of products to your own destination from so many other companies. It is cost effective. You schedule your transport using this route. Of course, if there is no such option available, then, that is a different matter.

 

Thus scheduling your route cuts on your expenses; moreover it saves some money in other ways also. For example, your maintenance expenses for your vehicle will be a little less.  Fuel cost, driver’s time you save which can be effectively utilized where you are left with no options of transshipping your products.

 

All these tasks require careful planning which demands your time and energy at an enormous level. But today, many agencies have come into being and they schedule your route provided you give them all they need; that, how much or rather how many products you have to dispatch; to which places, so on. Of course agencies charge for their services. Big corporate find it easy to engage agencies for such tasks so that they have time and save their energy for more particular tasks which they alone need to do: for example, innovation and marketing.

 

In our next session, we shall move on to supply chain coordination.