Planning Software

[surreymonkey]

I am trying to get my head round a few things prior to a meeting with my manager over timing issues. Would someone be able to confirm the following?

That the planning software used in current revisions is Pegasus/ Georoute

Are walk speeds built in to the software or entered by the planner?

Can the software recognise terrain variations or are these put in by the planner?

If I were to suggest that planners could manipulate information going in to achieve targeted savings would that be unfair or fair comment?

Thanks

[obscurityknocks]

I honestly dont think planners are clever enough to manipulate georoute. I think they are given a target amount of savings to achieve at each revision they do though. Georoute recognises terrains etc as long as it's correct in the a plus (I think that's what it's called), which should be done with each member of staff on that delivery.

[DGP1]

The planners do manipulate the figures, the easiest way is to input lower call rates and ignore attendance calls. Any figures they put in are totally wrong because they don't listen to us...............but then they do need us to sign off on them, which isn't going to happen

[Stormproof]

As far as I know terrain is put in by the planner or its done on A Plus. I know if there is a rise/fall in terrain ours has been changing it to resemble delivering to a 1st/2nd floor flat etc. Before our town must've looked like Salisbury Plain. No doubt this added to the massive failure of our previous P & L revision.

[hans solo]

I am trying to get my head round a few things prior to a meeting with my manager over timing issues. Would someone be able to confirm the following?

That the planning software used in current revisions is Pegasus/ Georoute

Are walk speeds built in to the software or entered by the planner?

Can the software recognise terrain variations or are these put in by the planner?

If I were to suggest that planners could manipulate information going in to achieve targeted savings would that be unfair or fair comment?

Thanks

they make it all up
planners dont listen to members input
don,t have planning team made up they take suggestions they want and ignore members aspirations
whatever agreed they ignore and/or ghange to suit their own savings targets and planning

you will get screwed over

[solcat]

We've just had 8-9 months of Planners,Managers etc doing our revision now all of a sudden it's scrapped
and a new one starting as soon as possible.All the while they were told as it stood it was'nt possible,How much
has that cost!!!!!

[fishtank]

We spent an eternity trying to get it right,A+ bang up to date,all manual adjustments done,we had people through from branch who had been fully trained in Georoute and we even had the guy who trained the Royal Mail planners have a final look at it,we pressed the magic button....and it spewed out s**t.
We tried again,it spewed out different s**t.

In the end we designed the duties by hand and left the planner with his toys,Georoute is not fit for purpose as a delivery route planning tool,you could feed it diamonds...it would spew out s**t.
Royal Mail were sold a pig in a poke but no-one has the courage to admit it.

[rollerron]

Your office "Controls" the data that is loaded into Georoute.

You have three months prior to the start to correct Terrain/Road Speeds/ other road restrictions/ Flat Type (Internal Measurments) your planner is looking for evidence that you have completed the task eg Validated walk logs with all the information shown and entered in one of the three applications (A Plus /Network Maint. etc) This is the data along with current call rates that and average traffic is uploaded into Georoute via A Plus.
(you also need to agree the Model Week to be used)
( In most offices the DOM has reported against a monthly target that these have been done!!!!!!!!)
KEY MESSAGE PUT RUBBISH IN GET RUBBISH OUT

Please Note This also has an impact if you are doing a collection revision If you need to go down a farm track does it have a relistic road speed.


What cannot be changed is the agreed National Georoute Timings for Walking and time taken for "Intervention - Knock-Handing over Keying in Data etc your planner /dom can supply this information if you do not have access to the Intranet Site. The only thing that you also need to ensure that when you do Packet Counts for ALL duties that you make sure that any item that requires you to Knock on a door (Yes even the DVD that will not fit in a Victorian Letter Box) are included

In short you need to put your postive brain in Gear - It works if the whole office can see that this is the way foward and you have a Job! You want everone who wants to have an input! ITs not an easy task!

[southernjessy]

you do everything that is expected of you, A PLUS,PACKET COUNT ETC, ETC, the planner puts it through geo route and the target savings for that office are not met. We all know each office has a predetermined number of hours it has to lose before the planner even starts the revision process.

The planner then disagrees with the figures and replies with that old chestnut

ITS A PERFORMANCE ISSUE

change the record please

[welshy808]

There are a couple of things that your Planner could do to make your revision more workable, but won't if you don't ask/demand that he does.

As we've seen on this forum 100 BSI is not part of the agreement and you should not sign up to anything that is unbelievable in your office.
Traffic levels, a gatekeeper count of you actual traffic should be kept as this could massively effect you IWT and therefore your indoor hours
Check Meal relief and WTLL in your duty planner, with the various attendance patterns you could loose out if they are not correct

Manual Adjustment to Path lengths. Georoute uses the shortest possible distance for a path. So for instance if the path actually 5 meters is longer then this gives a variation of 10 meters per house. if this happens on 100 houses on a duty then that is an extra 1 kilometer on the duty. you will find that a lot of duties that are not terraced housing will have more than 100 houses needing the manual adjustment. it may be time consuming but it is well worth it.

Counts of attendance calls(where you need to knock the door) are just as important. the default setting is something like 17 per 500 with 3 no answers. We all know that this is pathetically low with Large packets, Tracked, Specials, Recorded and small packets that wont fit through the letter box. you should keep a count per street for a couple of months to get the average attendance call rate for that street per duty is no good as in revisions streets move to new duties.

Terrain: while Georoute does take variations of terrain into account it is far to inflexible and while 1 in 12 or 1 in 8 may be considered very steep in some parts of the country it can get even steeper. manual adjustments should be made for areas which might be considerably steeper.

Other points that you should insist on within duty planner are the full amount of time for vehicle checks, time for both people in a shared van to collect and sign for their SD's, Planners will say one should collect the SD's while the other loads the van. You should under no circumstances be signing for SD's that you are not going to be responsible for. And time within a delivery for Welfare breaks is clearly written in the agreement although it will take a lot of arguing to get it included.

With all this done when duties still fail then you use phase 6 of the revision to iron out any issues.
Good luck with your revision

[hans solo]

i was also told to be more polite towards planners when they were in as my attitude towards them wasn,t good.
problem was i told planner he couldn,t f***** walk round route never mind deliver with a trolly
they were not best pleased

[DGP1]

i was also told to be more polite towards planners when they were in as my attitude towards them wasn,t good.
problem was i told planner he couldn,t f***** walk round route never mind deliver with a trolly
they were not best pleased

You so sound like a guy in my office..............of course the planner pissed off and hasn't returned while we've been there, so that's a result

[surreymonkey]

Many thanks for all your replies. I cannot help but think ( not for the first time ) that RM has made a simple job very complicated.