Local Zones

Overview

JAIX Freight offers many ways to help manage and rate consignments and loads; all the way from line-haul to local pickups & deliveries. Pickup and delivery management can be achieved via JAIX Freight's Allocations screen, which allows work to be planned, allocated to vehicles, and provides an overview of work to be completed. Local pickups and deliveries are also known as 'Bookings'.

Local Zones are a way to divide a depot's pickup and delivery area into sections, which can help allocations managers to identify which bookings should be allocated to which vehicles and when. For example by allocating all the north-bound deliveries on the same vehicle to avoid backtracking.

Local Zones are part of JAIX Freight's logical system of organising a Business.

Zones

JAIX Freight allows administrators to divide all the places a business operates in, into areas, called "Zones". These Zones are general points, between which Lanes can be configured. Lanes can then have rate information attached, allowing the system to automatically calculate the price and cost of a journey.

Locations

A Zone consists of one or more Locations. A Location is a discrete delivery area. It can be a suburb, a town, a campus or similar. A postcode can be attached to a Location, but several Locations may share the same postcode. A location is uniquely identified by its name, not its postcode. JAIX comes pre-configured with locations based on the Australia Post postcode / suburb listing however 'new' locations can be created where required.

Local Zones

To help in local deliveries and pickups, a Zone with a depot can be split into Local Zones. Local Zones appear on the Allocations screen alongside their bookings. This allows the work to be sorted and filtered by Local Zone to make it easier to visualise and manage.  Note that the Locations in a Local Zone also belong to its parent Zone.

Depots

A zone may contain a depot, but doesn't necessarily have to. However, for a Zone to contain Local Zones, it needs to have a depot setup against it as a managing zone.

Zone Sets

A collection of all of the above is called a Zone Set. Normally there is only one main Zone Set setup, although JAIX allows multiple Zone Sets to be created for more complex situations. For example, to overlay a contracted air freight business over line haul business where the two have different requirements for schedules.

The above should not be confused with:

• 'Subcontractor Zones' – to allow rates to be automatically calculated for subcontractors.
• 'Region Sets' – to cater for different customers' zoning requirements.

These are not covered in this module.

Zone Structures Visualized 

Local Zones Explained

As outlined above, Local Zones are a tool intended to make the allocation of bookings (pickups and deliveries) easier to manage.

Once setup, Local Zone names can be introduced from the column chooser (see STM Grids & Profiles for further guidance) as the 'Loc Zone' column next to each booking on the Allocations screen.

Using the Allocations grid's tools, bookings can be sorted or filtered by local zone, giving a clearer view of the work to be completed. For example all the bookings for a Local Zone can be allocated to one vehicle so that the driver isn't doing a lot of backtracking.

A local zone setup screen, like a normal zone, contains a list of locations. But unlike a normal zone it does not have setup for Vias. It does have setup for services. Here services in the local zone can have settings like Close Time, Last Ready Time and Lead Time added to further help Allocations.

Setup a Local Zone

To setup Local Zones, it must first be decided what locations will make up each Local Zone and which Zone/Depot they will operate under.

For example, the Main Zone Set may contain a Zone named 'Appleton' which consists of 50 locations. For allocations purposes it is decided to divide this zone into five local zones, each containing ten of the locations:

• Appleton (Parent Zone, 50 locations)
  • Appleton Central (Local Zone, 10 locations)
  • Appleton North (Local Zone, 10 locations)
  • Appleton East (Local Zone, 10 locations)
  • Appleton South (Local Zone, 10 locations)
  • Appleton West (Local Zone, 10 locations)

A zone is created in the main zone set called "Appleton" This is the parent zone and contains all the locations serviced.

JAIX Freight > Depots & Zones > Search & Setup Zone Sets > (open the Main zone set)

To edit an existing zone double click it from the list of zones, or to add a new zone click the New button in the ribbon.

A managing depot is created and attached to the Appleton Zone under the appropriate zone Set (normally 'Main').

JAIX Freight > Depots & Zones > Search & Setup Depots

To edit an existing depot double click on it from the list of depots or select the depot and click the Edit button in the ribbon. To add a new depot click the New button in the ribbon.

The local zone is created under its parent zone. Local Zones contain a subset of locations of their parent zone.

To create a Local Zone, first select the Parent Zone and click the Add Local Zone button in the ribbon. If the Add Local Zone button is missing, this means that there is no managing zone attached to the depot.

In the Local Zone tab, name the local zone and give it a code. The code is what will be displayed on the Allocations screen so make the codes logical and consistent.

Service Settings can also be adjusted for the Local Zone here. They can be set while the Local Zone is first created, or altered later.

The following will limit customers' ability to book pickups via the website Portal where they do not comply with these settings.

The logic behind the validation is listed below. Note: Validation should occur in the below order.

Validation Rule – Close Time

If Ready At Date = Users System Date (Branch Date)  AND  Users System Time (Branch Time) >= Close Time then Disallow Pickup

Validation Rule – Last Ready At Time

If Ready At Time > Last Ready At Time then Disallow Pickup

Validation Rule – Lead Time

Calculate difference between Users System Date/Time (Branch Date/Time) and the Pickup Ready Date/Time (in minutes).  If less than the Lead Time then Disallow Pickup.

It is also here that Locations are added to the Local Zone. See "Assigning Locations to a Local Zone" below for details on how to do this.

Once the above is saved, going back to the list of zones in your zone set and clicking the Refresh button, will show the newly created Local Zone under its parent Zone. The small, black plus sign next to the Parent Zone may need to be pressed to expand the list of Local Zones. If the small plus sign next to a zone is grey there are no Local Zones under that zone.

Assigning Locations to a Local Zone

The Locations section of the Local Zone tab has several tools to help find and assign Locations to the Local Zone.

Along the top of the section are;

• From Postcode and To Postcode fields. These fields filter locations by postcode. Enter a minimum and maximum for a range of postcodes to be displayed.

• The Selected Only tick box will filter out Locations that have not been assigned to the Local Zone.

• The Parent Zone Locations Only tickbox will filter out Locations that do not belong to the Parent Zone. It is recommended to first assign all the Parent Zone's Locations to the Parent Zone, then assign Locations to the Local Zones. Ticking this box will then filter out all irrelevant Locations.

Below that is the list of Locations. To select a Location tick the box to its left. All selected Locations will move to the top of the list. Unselected Locations will remain below.

No Locations will be assigned until the Save or Save & Exit buttons in the ribbon are pressed.

If a Location is highlighted red this means that it is already assigned elsewhere. Assigning this Location to this Local Zone will remove it from where it already is assigned.

Along the bottom of the section are three buttons to aid selection: