Speed up your planning processes with the slot planner

Planning can be a very time-consuming process even if you have a system that helps speed it up. With the new Slot Planner functionality in Mandata’s Go TMS, you can speed up your planning processes and have a clear view of the loads you have planned throughout your week.

The Slot Planner feature lets you create your own number of slots to build loads in each day, and plan loads for one or more days at once – as well as plan loads that take up two or more slots or take more than one day to complete. This allows you to view multiple loads for multiple days.

Using the slot planner is simple. The cleaner view and faster response time means you only see the data you require and can drag and drop your jobs quickly and easily into the required slots. Here’s a quick review of the process:

First, you choose if you want to add a slot planning tile to an existing vehicle planning, trailer planning, driver planning, subcontractor planning screen or an entire new lay out altogether.

(Image above showing slots open and ready for jobs to be dragged and dropped into them)

Then you simply select the jobs you wish to add to each slot from your job stages grid.

(Image above showing jobs being selected from the job stages grid)

Once you’ve selected those jobs you simply drag them down and drop them into the required slot.

The cells with loads are colour coded to indicate what stage of a job they are on, much like normal jobs, and you can hover over to see additional information (which can be edited in settings to include what you want to see) around the load.

(Image above shows additional information around a load when you hover over with your mouse)

Once you’ve dragged your load into the correct slot, simply click the circle in the top right-hand corner of the load to send the job to the Manifests app. From here your driver can acknowledge and accept the jobs.

The slot planner really is that easy to set up and use, and has several benefits over the normal job planner, including:

• Faster response time – the new planning tiles are particularly useful if you have a lot of resources and plan several loads per day, or for more than one day at a time.
• Cleaner view –customisable load displays and tooltips mean you’re only seeing the data you want to see.
• Full drag and drop – easily replan loads using quick drag and drop onto different slots, days or resources.
• Multi-slot and multi-day loads visualised – at a glance view of the slots a load occupies.
• Load start and end points clearly shown
• Simple to set up and use – it only takes a few minutes to add a slot planning tile to your layout and configure it. Default templates are provided for the load display and tooltips. A simple tool allows you to change the information shown on them and even the colours that are used.

Hear what Luke Sykes at BiFrost Transport thinks of Mandata GoPlus and the Slot Planner

So what are you waiting for? Improve the speed at which you plan jobs today with the Slot Planner feature in Mandata’s Go and GoPlus TMS.  If you’d like more information request a demo.