The company where I am doing a lot of work at the moment (named in my other posts) are in the process of bringing in the Paragon system. It’s an absolute mess. Other DC’s who have already brought it in keep switching it off because of the mess it is making of the job. In the 80’s when I was a teenager I was a bit of whiz with computers. I used to program computer programmes and fully understand computer logic. I have also been driving trucks in this industry since I was 21 so have a pretty good experience of how it works (or doesn’t depending on how and who is running certain operations). Marrying the two up, there is no way that a computer system can replace real time human decision making in the trucking industry. There are too many ‘human’ variables that a computer just couldn’t replace. Has anyone else any thoughts on this or any other kind of computer system ?
(I love the company thing at the bottom - “Our companies who rely on us”… from what I’m seeing and hearing, the only 3 of them that I’ve heard about whilst using Paragon are either up the wall or have switched it off !!!
When I worked for a well known company, they brought it in, and the i.t bod sang it’s praises to high heaven, but I refused to use it. I was working in there recently on the agency, (Yes I do go back from time to time on the agency to earn more money, as they are salaried.) and their current man planning admitted it isn’t perfect, yet still they use it nearly 6 1/2 years after I have left.
Case in point…
2 drops in Catford, Lewisham and Peckham. Paragon said 2 trailers, my brain and experience of those drops said 1.
I rest my case.
But the i.t man was convinced it would save money…
we have it and its a pile of 5hyte, a lot of our runs are multi drop (unless your one of the blue eyed boys ) and would be a dam sight better planned if they were done by someone with experience in the job i.e ex driver
When I worked for the bakery in Banbury they brought it in,jesus what a mess it made of the route’s…we used to have 4 drop’s in Aylesbury,all on one 17tonner then he would do Tring and Hemel as well…Paragon decided to send 4 different 17 tonners into Aylesbury on their way down to London and put the Tring and Hemel on with Milton Keynes …I left soon after but I did hear they got shot of it
It is strange that no one yet has come up with a working load scheduler for trucks. All the info is there on digital maps, and you can feed in delivery restrictions and the fleet details; so what’s the problem?
Any computerised system I came across needed a human to resolve the conflicts which made it rather pointless. I did have a program once that showed us how to get the maximum cube of assorted boxes in a container which was great, except it took ages to feed the info and the loaders never followed it anyway.
Paragon will tell you that a 2 hour run takes 2 hours.
They don’t factor in things like perma-roadworks on the M1 and M25 for example. “Computer says No” never met this daft software that is all based on utopian roads with brand new vehicles never driving in rush hour and having keen staff willing to go that extra mile (literally - to get around traffic jams!).
I’d say to make Paragon work, you need to end all road works, and stop advertising “6 points ok” in driving ads first!
I have no idea what we use but the last few months the computer has been spitting on some wild runs. Ive went from an average 10 hour day to a 12-13 hour day. Dont bother me if they want to pay me to go on a sightseeing trip round scotland then so be it
…I left soon after but I did hear they got shot of it
