Routing SOP

Overview

The routing process is a critical step in supporting the Whirlpool account. It’s through this process that you fine tune stops and routes to ensure customer satisfaction, a quality driver/employee experience, and profitable, efficient routes – which are our three main objectives when routing.

The Three Main Objectives

• Set ourselves up for success by meeting our customer expectations.
  • Ensure that the stops are in order that we can meet the delivery windows. Keep in mind that a customer’s delivery window is not an arrival window. It includes arriving, performing the delivery, and properly completing the stop out in the system while collecting the necessary pictures and signatures before the end of the window.
  • If something about the way a customer was setup in the system (e.g., incorrect delivery window) or the way the delivery document was created, it is the LDCs responsibility to address it. Utilize the ZNOM_ACC transaction in SAP to determine who you should contact to have the situation corrected; Whirlpool@AllegroHomeDelivery.com should also be copied.
• Protect the driver and delivery team experience.
  • A return pickup to start the day with a full truck is not the best driver’s experience. When routing, identify options to group pickups together and after large volume of deliveries so that teams are not trying to move deliveries around pickups on the truck. Although it’s not always possible, it’s a worthy step in the process that your teams will appreciate.
  • Consider where the driver will be traveling throughout the day. Are there higher traffic areas at certain times in the day that you need to adjust to? Is the driver going on a one-way route? Does the driver prefer to have a longer driver to start the day versus at the end of the day? Not only will this improve the partnership, but it will also factor in preferences that lead to safer routes.
• Routing efficiently is one of the largest levers in cost control.
  • Fuel, equipment, and drivers/employees can be expensive. Ensuring that you have full trucks and recharges will reduce the amount of overhead that you have. Routes that can be combined and condensed into a single route must be.
  • A full truck is one with stacked product and approximately 34.99 – 35.00 points of cubic volume.
    • Drivers must use a 26’ box truck with a lift gate that has a height tall enough to support stacking appliances.

Routing Preparedness

To best prepare the LDC for routing, the resources for that location must be properly configured. Resources are the shells or trucks that are loaded into Route Planner (RP) that volume populates on and ultimately become routes.

When requesting your resources to be created, there are a few key factors to consider:

• The start and end time of the resource in the system.
  • Allegro resources should be set to at least 10-hour windows which will allow 9-hour routes to be constructed. 8:00 – 18:00 is the preference, but 7:00 – 17:00 is also acceptable if the region has multiple customers who receive early in the day.
• The size of the resource, 53’ vs 26’.
• Resource attributes like a lift gate or ramp.
• The truck key name, ST-1 vs ST-1-2D if the resource runs a single day or two-day route.
• Are the resources normally frozen, yes or no.
  • Used typically for overflow equipment or if you often switch between truck sizes.

Once these factors are outlined for all the LDC resources, the LDC will partner with Allegro to submit the request with our Whirlpool partners to create.

Another key step in preparing for routing is to ensure you have the proper capacity unfrozen on future days for delivery and pickup volume to populate. If you have a driver going on vacation for a week, you must either find other members to run that route or freeze the route ahead of time to prevent unnecessary customer disappointments and replanned deliveries. It’s best to look ahead at least a week at a time each time you route to plan your frozen versus unfrozen resources. While looking ahead, please inspect that the resources that are expected to be created and available are there. If they are not, please partner with Whirlpool@AllegroHomeDelivery.com to address this with Whirlpool – this includes shuttle shells.

Routing Timing

The LDCs must have an appointed person to route for the location each day, Monday – Friday. Routing takes place two days in advance. For example, on a Monday, the routes are being created for Wednesday. On routing days that fall on a holiday, a revised routing schedule will be communicated if the holiday impacts the routing schedule.

Locations are not to begin the routing process until 3:30pm local time of their associated RDC (Regional Distribution Center). Delivery volume populates throughout the day and ends at 3:00pm local RDC time. From 3:00pm – 3:30, the RDC can remove documents to go RDC-direct and is why routing cannot start prior to 3:30pm local RDC time. Routing ahead of time may result in unassigned stops that were not routed or routing for jobs that will later be pulled by the RDC.

Unassigned Stops

Note: To view all unassigned stops, you must use the drop down to select “Show All” in the Unassigned Stops quadrant. Failure to complete this step will prevent all documents from being seen.

Unassigned stops are documents that did not naturally slot on a resource for fulfillment. Each day, during the routing process, any documents that are in the Unassigned Stops quadrant must be scheduled to a future date which may require replanning the document if there is no capacity available for the date the documents are currently scheduled to. At any given time, all documents that have been assigned to the LDC for fulfillment must have a future date assigned to them which will reserve future capacity for the work to be done. This will also prevent Whirlpool sending escalations on aging deliveries.

 Routing Process

Each LDC must follow the outlined “Allegro Whirlpool: How to Route” document to support their routing completion. The how to document may evolve over time, please check regularly for updates.

The milestones of routing can be summarized as:

• Opening capacity
  • Ensuring that the resources are properly set up and are frozen/unfrozen properly ahead of time.
• Aggregating delivery volume
  • Deliveries will populate and optimize on the resources in the Planning schedule.
  • LDCs can look ahead to identify volume that can be pulled forward to build more route density and ensure the target date is met.
• Reassigning the volume and resources to Review
  • In the Review schedule, the LDC will manually review the routes adhering to the three main objectives outlined previously.
  • If any volume scheduled for that day cannot be completed due to max capacity, they must be replanned at this step.
• Double checking Unassigned Stops
  • This is a chance to verify you have addressed all unassigned stops for your LDC. Every document must have a future date.
• Publishing the routes
  • Once the review is completed, publish the routes, and reassign them to Dispatch.
• Performing hygiene by archiving any resources that were not utilized during routing
  • There should be no resources left in Planning for the day you are routing for at this step.
• Ordering product shuttles
  • After a few minutes of publishing the routes, the product needed for the routes will populate on the Shuttle schedule. This will allow the LDC to place the product on the shuttle shells in the specific order that they want to unload them. Pay attention to this step as it varies between the strategy of staging versus swinging the product on the dock.
  • Shuttles must be ordered in sequence. Start with 1 then 2 and so on. Shuttles must be ordered full except the last shuttle ordered. A full shuttle has at least 95 points on it but not more than 100 points. If a shuttle is ordered under 95 points, the risk of cancellation occurs. If the shuttle is not cancelled, it could be rearranged to make other shuttles that were ordered fuller, which will disrupt the planning of which order the product was selected to be loaded.
• Publishing the shuttles
  • Once the shuttles have been loaded and all products are on a shuttle, the shuttles must be published to submit the product order from the RDC.
  • A confirmation email will be generated for each shuttle ordered. If you do not receive this within an hour, please contact WPL Night Routing and Whirlpool@AllegroHomeDelivery.com for support.
• Completing driver assignment
  • • Return to the Dispatch schedule to assign drivers/crews to the routes.
    • Drivers and crews must be notified of their routes to prevent no-shows and dropped routes.
• Preparing paperwork for the routes
  • • Identify and print any needed route manifests, return BOLs, worksheets, etc. that are necessary for the route.
•  Communication
  • Ensure confirmation has been received from drivers for each route.
  • Catalogue a routing summary for the day and retain for your records. Send any issues or concerns to Whirlpool@AllegroHomeDelivery.com for additional support.
• Morning of adjustments
  • If on the morning of a route a driver assignment needs to be changed, the stops on a route need to be reordered, or stops need adjusted across routes, the LDC must re-publish each adjusted route by selecting “Publish to WGLN” after right clicking on the route(s).
  • If a driver was already signed into a route that they are now not running, the driver may need to reactivate MobileLink to remove the route from their phone.