More consistent routes: interview with Benjamin Legendre, Operations Manager at Sterne Group
- December 8, 2021
- 2 mins
Kardinal supports the STERNE Group in the digitalization and optimization of its business. As a specialist in urgent and customized transportation, Sterne Group is optimizing delivery scheduling for its Novéa/STERNE City subsidiary with Kardinal’s real-time route optimization solution.
Benjamin Legendre, Director of Operations for the group, answered our questions about the implementation of this project.
Kardinal: Hi Benjamin, can you tell us a bit more about you and Novéa/STERNE City?
Benjamin Legendre: I am Benjamin Legendre, Director of Operations at Novéa/STERNE City since 15 years. Novéa/STERNE City carries out more than 3,200 trips per day, mainly suburban trips in the Paris, Strasbourg, Lyon, Mulhouse and Bordeaux regions. The company has 180 employees.
The Nanterre branch carries out about ten routes per day, depending on the season. Between 300 and 800 orders a day arrive in the morning, which are then optimized and delivered before 5 p.m.
K: What were the issues that led Novéa/STERNE City to start this project with Kardinal?
BL: We’ve always been creative at Novéa/STERNE City and wanted to be the first to invent new solutions. Cities are constantly changing, so we needed to implement an optimization solution that would allow us to make routes with the least number of kilometers and the least amount of CO2 emissions possible. Protecting the environment is one of the group’s major commitments.
Before the project with Kardinal, our teams were using an obsolete solution, which was not updated regularly, and with which we had a lot of trouble. The solution did not take our constraints or the type of vehicle used (car or motorcycle) into account correctly, and it created inconsistent routes where two couriers delivered packages to two different customers living at the same address. We were looking for a real-time optimizer and the only one on the market today to offer this type of solution is Kardinal.
K: How are you using Kardinal's software solution and what are your first feedbacks?
BL: There is nothing better than a route optimization solution. Even if my teams and I know Paris very well, there is no point in manually optimizing 60 streets in a district in the morning. Since Kardinal’s optimization is continuous, the routes are refined as we go along. The drivers have noticed that the routes are much smoother.
We use Kardinal’s solution at the end of the afternoon when we have received all the orders for the next day. Within 30 minutes, we know how many drivers will be needed for the routes. If the solution has calculated that 8 drivers will be needed, we will plan for 8, or even 7, because we know that it will continue to optimize and look for new, more relevant routes. This is also a great convenience! The routes are then validated the next morning when the team leader arrives at 7:30 a.m., after having let the solution optimize all night.
The advantage of Kardinal is that we can have one session per user and that the work done by one person is saved and accessible to others, without having to restart the optimization.
