Yard Smart Powers Royal Mail

For more than 360 years, the Royal Mail has been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to postal service. They were among the first to use technologies like trains and airplanes to speed delivery. With the advent of deregulation in the U.K.’s postal industry, the Royal Mail knew it needed to continue innovating to remain the postal service of choice.

In this case, innovation meant moving away from its combined train-and-truck system to a more efficient truck-centered network with a central hub that would need to process nearly 80 percent of the 84 million items the Royal Mail handles every day.

The challenge

For the Royal Mail, the challenge was how to coordinate a 110-dock facility that would average over 1,600 gate transactions a day with an average spacing of 26 seconds at peak times. Any breakdown in process would have an impact all up and down the U.K. A single delayed trailer could impact the quality of service for 40 mail distribution sub-centers across the U.K.

The solution

C3 project team worked in parallel with Royal Mail’s implementation team so that the Daventry hub would hit the ground running. One of the most important project steps was to build a virtual yard using the C3 Simulator. This simulation allowed Royal Mail to identify some serious issues with the planned yard layout. By switching the planned locations for inbound and outbound areas, they were able to avoid an ongoing source of serious congestion.

Yard Smart also allowed Royal Mail’s team to role play many different scheduling scenarios and analyze impacts on service levels. Yard Smart’s Inbound Agent Module provided the means to optimize the inbound schedule and the flexibility to provide marshals using handheld devices the ability to manage live moves.

The end result of all this planning was a 53 percent reduction in shunting vehicles over the original planned number. Yard Smart also allowed Royal Mail to reduce the hub’s control-room staff by 43 percent and reduced to a minimum the need for manual processes and radio communications. The overall yard visibility, tracking and analytics built into Yard Smart are also providing valuable data to continuously refine the system.

"The National Distribution Centre in Daventry could not be run without Yard Smart. This solution efficiently supports our work and enables Royal Mail to reach our stretching service levels targets. The aim is to further reduce our overheads and assets by continuing to work with C3 to develop new and exciting functionality for the whole Royal Mail Network."

Christopher Murray
Control Room Manager,
Royal Mail