GEOCOM TMS ADDS DYNAMIC SOURCING AND DROP & HOOK FUNCTIONALITIES TO TMS ROUTER

KEY INNOVATIONS INCREASE GEOCOM TMS TECHNOLOGY LEAD
IN VEHICLE ROUTING AND SCHEDULING
Atlanta, Georgia, March 28, 2001 -- GeoCom TMS, leader in transportation management systems, today announced the availability of Dynamic Sourcing and Drop & Hook functionalities in its current release of TMS Router, a highly scalable client/server application, designed to handle very large and complex routing problems.
Dynamic Sourcing, or dynamic depot/terminal selection, was designed for and is critical in producing accurate vehicle routes in many industries. Some examples are:
ü   In Oil, Gas and Chemical companies, trucks will often have to stop at a remote terminal midway through the route to refill.
ü   Waste Management companies must determine the best transfer station or landfill to unload collections when trucks become full.
ü   In Banking and Currency Couriers, the vehicles must periodically return to collection centers or depositories to drop off and pick up.
Christopher J. Russell, President of GeoCom TMS in the USA, explains, This functionality is significant given that most routing solutions currently wont handle these types of problems well. Other solutions may route the vehicles to return to their original depot or home terminal to fill up and drop off; or, if they do handle depots, end-users must manually assign stops to depots. TMS Router provides a much more accurate, and efficient solution. TMS Router automatically takes the availability of remote depots into account during optimization while creating the routes. In industries where a trucks daily run involves reloading or dropping off, this is the only way to produce accurate and efficient routes; and can be worth up to 10% in additional mileage efficiency."

TMS Router also now fully supports the Drop & Hook requirements of fleets. The drop & hook functionality is essential in industries where the loading and unloading of trailers takes more time than the decoupling and coupling time. The trailers can be left in the yard to be unloaded later while the tractor remains efficiently utilized.
TMS Router has the unique ability of scheduling tractors and trailers separately while the algorithm creates optimal routes. This functionality increases utilization and prevents deadheads by allowing tractors to couple again to waiting trailers.
INCREASING THE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANTAGE OF TMS ROUTER:
Dynamic Sourcing and Drop & Hook functionalities add to the ever-increasing stable of technology that makes TMS Router the premier routing and scheduling solution in the industry. Other unique capabilities already built in the TMS Router solution include:
·   True client server architecture with TCP/IP networking and an enterprise RDBMS that enables cost effective deployment across organizations.
·   Constrained genetic algorithm that understands weight, volume, stop sequence dependencies, and hard time windows.
·   In house cartographic department that produces and maintains the street level maps that understand turn restrictions, weight constraints and other map attributes necessary for realistic routing.
AVAILABILITY:
Both the Drop & Hook and Dynamic Sourcing innovations are available in the current release of TMS Router.
GEOCOM TMS INC.
Leader in Transportation Management Systems, GeoCom TMS designs, implements and supports software tools to optimize productivity, increase the quality of customer service and integrate with the current daily logistics operations of customers supporting a transportation component in their business. GeoCom TMS products integrate with most Supply Chain vendors. GeoCom TMS Series modules are multi-lingual.
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EDITORIAL CONTACT:

Brenda M. Garis
GEOCOM TMS, USA
(908) 459-0082
bgaris@geocom-usa.com

Pascale LHeureux
GeoCom TMS, Canada
(418) 650-5500
plheureux@geocomtms.com