Let the system make the first plan
A planner's hardest hour is the empty board at seven in the morning. Retrack TMS fills it in, using the rules you already work to, and leaves you to argue with the result.
Request DemoWhat automatic planning actually is
It is not a robot taking over the board. It is the system doing the part a planner finds least interesting: taking today's orders and producing a first workable allocation of loads to vehicles, in a sensible order to drive them.
That draft is where the planner starts, instead of a blank screen. You keep the knowledge the software does not have: that this customer will not accept a delivery before nine whatever their window says, that this driver knows the site, that this load is worth being late for.
The useful question is not whether the computer plans better than your planner. It is how much of the routine your planner should be doing by hand at all.
What it plans around
A plan is only as good as the constraints it respects. These are the ones a planner is holding in their head today.
Time windows
Opening hours and agreed slots per address, including the ones that differ by day. A window that cannot be met shows as a conflict rather than being quietly broken.
Vehicle and capacity
What each vehicle takes by weight, volume and carrier positions, and which vehicles can reach which sites at all.
Driver hours
Shift length and breaks, so a route that cannot legally be driven is not proposed in the first place.
Dock slots
Where loading and unloading are booked, the plan works to the slot instead of arriving to queue for one.
Equipment and returns
Carriers to take out and bring back, so the vehicle collecting empties has the room to carry them.
Distance and cost
Kilometres, driving time and what a trip actually costs you, so a cheaper plan and a faster plan can be compared rather than guessed at.
What it does not do
It does not plan a day you have not described. Where time windows live in people's heads, addresses are inconsistent and half the orders arrive after the run has started, automatic planning produces a confident plan built on the wrong facts. Getting the data right is the work; the planning is the easy part.
It is also not always better than a planner. On a small, stable round the same person has driven for years, planning by hand is usually faster and usually right. Automation earns its place when the number of combinations stops being something one person can hold at once.
What changes on the planning board
Not a plan nobody understands. A starting point that is already defensible.
The board is never empty
The morning starts with a complete proposed plan, so the planner's time goes on the exceptions rather than on the first eighty percent.
Constraints apply the same way every day
A rule written into the system is a rule applied whether or not the person who knows it came in today.
A change mid-morning is not a rebuild
An order cancelled or a vehicle off the road re-proposes the trips it touches, rather than forcing the whole day to be redone by hand.
Two plans can sit side by side
Because distance, time and cost come out of one model, “is this one better?” becomes a question with an answer.
Questions about automatic planning
Will it overrule our planners?
No. It proposes, the planner decides. Anything it produces can be dragged, split or ignored, and the plan you release is the one you agreed with.
Our work is too specific for a standard algorithm.
Often true of part of it, which is why the constraints are yours rather than generic and why planners keep the board. Most operations have a routine majority and an awkward remainder; the value is in the majority.
What happens when our data is wrong?
You get a wrong plan, quickly. That is the honest answer. Automatic planning makes data quality visible, because a bad address or a missing window becomes a conflict on the board instead of something a planner silently works around.
Can we use it for part of the fleet?
Yes, and that is usually how it starts. One depot or one kind of work is planned automatically while the rest stays manual, which also gives you something to compare it against.
How is this different from route optimisation?
Route optimisation decides the order of stops within a trip. Automatic planning decides which loads go on which vehicle in the first place, and then optimises each trip. The same engine doing two jobs.
Try it on a day you remember
Give us a real day: the orders, the vehicles, the constraints. We will plan it automatically and show you the result next to what you actually drove.
Request Demo