K3 aims to help manufacturers cut haulage costs

UK SYSPRO ERP specialist K3 Business Technology Group (K3) has linked up with a South African software developer in a bid to save manufacturers thousands of pounds in haulage costs.

The Manchester-based company is working in partnership with transport planning and fleet optimisation specialist OPSI to help companies use their internal and external fleets of vehicles more cost-effectively, with savings of up to 20 per cent.

OPSIs Planning Logistics and Transport Optimiser (PLATO) logistics software fits perfectly with K3s SYSPRO ERP system. SYSPRO enables manufacturers to shrink time to market; from initial design through production and out of the factory gate, providing seamless integration with both financial and distribution modules. It also offers superior features for estimating, scheduling, costing, lot and serial tracking, as well as back-flushing, material verification, inventory optimisation and planning.

PLATO is a central management system that makes the transportation process more efficient and cost-effective. It manages and enables the visualisation of the entire transportation process from order inception to financial administration for external hauliers.

The system complements order management, forecasting, warehouse management, yard management, tracking and financial administration systems.  Plus, it is robust enough to create accurate and optimal planning models and flexible enough to allow for estimations and re-optimisations during execution.

Sam Nudelman, Marketing Director of OPSI, a global organisation with its head office in South Africa, says: Our software works for any fleet of vehicles, from 10 cars for sales agents up to 1,000 or more trucks.  It helps to minimise the mileage driven, maximise the fleet utilisation and, through ongoing monitoring substantially reduces the cost of doing business. Depending on the type of enterprise, fleet cost savings of 10-20 per cent is usual. The exciting part for us is that K3 is a well established and reputable company in the UK with a large footprint. It has a great team and is ideally suited as a partner organisation because our products are totally complementary to the current K3 offering.

Howard Joseph, Managing Director, K3 Business Technology Group says: SYSPRO is already adding value to the businesses of our customers, underlining the importance of why people are investing in the latest systems to remain competitive and stay one step ahead of the competition. PLATO is a natural stablemate for SYSPRO in potentially offering our customers further cost-effective distribution solutions and we are delighted to be working with OPSI as a partner organisation.

SYSPRO user Westland Horticulture has already been using the PLATO system which has delivered impressive results.

Paul McKernan, Group Head of IT at Westland, says: OPSI Systems completed the installation of PLATO at Westland Horticulture with great attention to detail and worked far above and beyond what was expected to ensure that the system went Live. Since Go-Live they have provided support for the system and on the rare occasion that we have any issues they are resolved quickly. The benefit to Westland over the last 15 months has been exceptional, a more streamlined planning process, quicker access to information, greater control of our haulier invoices, as well as an increase in load efficiency.