Highlights
- 22% average reduction in delivery drive time
- 21% increase in SKU units per vending machine
- 90% reduction in manual scheduling time
Vending operators face a number of very complex challenges that aren’t typical of most last mile fleets. They deal with complex commercial access requirements, leasing arrangements, machine service and downtime, and reverse logistics for expired or phased-out SKUs. Most efficiency software isn’t designed for these demanding requirements, so Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, one of the largest global Coke bottlers and the largest vending operations company in Australia, turned to Adiona.
CCEP wanted to maximise their revenue from each machine and knew that improving the efficiency of their replenishment fleet was critical to achieving this. They had tried a number of optimization platforms before, but none of them captured the unique requirements of their business and their customers, and they often resorted to fully manual scheduling. This felt especially inefficient considering that they have a mature demand prediction engine capturing daily data from most machines. They needed a way to tie that input along with their custom targets to their replenishment delivery fleet.
The first step was to import a set of sample data and let the FlexOps Diagnostics AI engine create a customised process map of their high level operation. By mining historical data, this process map linked key steps in their physical operations to data that could be used in various optimisation algorithms.
By replacing their manual scheduling process with a customised instance of Adiona FlexOps, CCEP were able to link their demand predictions with all of the machines in tight geographical clusters, related SKUs, and SKU priorities related to margin calculations. In just two weeks, the customised algorithm, delivered by the FlexOps RESTful API framework, was delivering results with $0 capital expenditure investment.
Importantly, the FlexOps API was easy to integrate into their existing IT stack by writing a few scripts to import and export the necessary data. This allowed FlexOps to be completely customised but also remain standalone for fast implementation.
Post Covid-19, the value of FlexOps has increased even more for . As their traditional high-volume sites like railway stations and schools have seen major traffic reductions, they can use FlexOps and historical data to create projection models for superior business intelligence.
Adiona worked quickly to understand our business then delivered an innovative solution that drove measurable value within 4 weeks. We believe their products and expertise are a good fit for our business and continue to explore opportunities with Adiona.
Stuart Comino
Former General Manager for Direct to Consumer
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners
