ProvisionAI Introduces LevelLoad – Replenishment Transportation Scheduling

FRANKLIN, Tenn., April 11, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ProvisionAI, the only provider of an optimized replenishment transportation scheduling solution, introduces LevelLoad. This next generation scheduling tool fixes replenishment by bridging the gap between supply planning and execution. This is a new genre of optimization software that balances transportation cost and site capacities while meeting customer service goals.

“Supply chain constraints, such as throughput capacity and space availability, can crush supply plans since there are only so many loads that sites can ship or receive in a day and only so much space in the warehouse,” says Tom Moore, Founder and CEO, ProvisionAI. “LevelLoad creates an executable, smoothed transportation plan that reduces volatility, lowers transportation cost, and better fills customer orders.”

Most supply planning systems tend to neglect the cost and network consequences of their plans. This oversight can lead to uneven shipment schedules from manufacturing plants to customer-facing warehouses, causing significant negative effects on operations. For instance, a sudden increase in trailer arrivals can result in insufficient space and labor to load or unload trucks, ultimately degrading customer fill rates as products needed for orders fail to be unloaded on time.

LevelLoad addresses these challenges by analyzing shipment patterns over the next 30 days and identifying unnecessary spikes in demand, for example at month end. The system can then adjust by shipping some products early or holding less-needed items a day or two. This results in a more balanced transportation plan, enabling the use of preferred carriers and ensuring adequate storage space and labor availability across all sites.

Simultaneously, LevelLoad's optimizing load builder maximizes vehicle capacity utilization. Together, these capabilities enabled a large CPG company to tender loads 2-3 days earlier, allowing them to commit to trucks earlier without increased risk of forecast uncertainty. LevelLoad only defines load contents just before loading, minimizing the risk.

LevelLoad employs a cutting-edge combination of linear programming, heuristics, and reinforcement learning (AI) to achieve these results. The system processes network demand, order, forecast, and transportation data, along with facility constraints, to generate daily optimizations. The output is a globally feasible, cost-effective, and customer-service satisfying replenishment transportation schedule. This enables shippers to commit to carriers earlier and build optimized shipments, streamlining the entire supply chain process.

LevelLoad's practical, cost-effective, and high-service deployment plans offer the following features and benefits:

• Holistic, constraint-based optimization streamlines and prioritizes inventory movement across the entire network.
• Product availability guarantees to satisfy customer demand while minimizing detention expenses and eliminating overtime hours.
• Efficient load sizing reduces monthly shipments on each lane, cutting costs by 4-8%, eliminating truck journeys, and lowering CO2 emissions.
• Early carrier engagement secures trucks, enhancing first tender acceptance, obtaining better carrier rates, and ensuring on-time customer service.
• Warehouse constraint consideration and daily capacity limits for loading or unloading result in a feasible schedule for each site in the network.
• 3D load design enables sites to ship planned items for each truck, decreasing transit damage, reducing landfill waste, and improving on-shelf presence.

About ProvisionAI

ProvisionAI provides global manufacturers a transportation scheduling solution featuring optimized replenishment. LevelLoad, the flagship offering, attains long-term transportation planning objectives despite the realities of operational and supply-chain-network constraints. The results include more full loads, higher use of preferred freight carriers, and overall lower costs all while meeting customer service objectives. Clients save millions by tendering loads early to reserve preferred carriers. Loads are filled with more product on fewer trucks ratcheting down costs. The patented technology was developed over five years by a team of logistics optimization experts that studied shippers like Unilever, Nestlé, Baxter, P&G, and Kimberly-Clark. For more information, visit www.provisionai.com.