Route optimisation for fleets, whether for delivery routes or maintenance vehicles, is able to deliver emissions reductions, cost reductions, and improve the lives of people working in vehicles.
These are the three pillars of Adiona Tech, a NSW start up providing machine learning AI to improve logistics efficiency for Fleet Managers.
The start up began in NSW following a project for a custom platform to optimise delivery routes for Coca-Cola, and over 2.5 years has grown to support large and small fleets across Australia, particularly in last mile delivery.
Co-founders Richard Savoie (CEO) and Quang Huynh (CTO) have backgrounds in engineering and computer science respectively, and with Adiona have been cleaning up in sustainable tech awards both in Australia and internationally, including the Australasian Fleet Champions Awards and the top award at the Australian Technologies Competition for Sustainable Cities, Communities, and Transport.
“In 2023 we saved over 3,000 litres of fuel for our customers and $2.4 million USD in costs, and we’ve optimised over 30 million deliveries since we started.” say CEO Savoie.
The Flex Ops product is a cloud based software solution which can use existing telematics data, or an easy phone app, to track vehicles routes. With this and a range of other data, the AI system delivers the best paths for drivers, whether for a regular route, such as rubbish collection, or a dynamic delivery route with a daily changing list of destinations.
This information can be used to plan vehicle use months in advance, assisting in staffing and vehicle usage projections, total cost of ownership and ROI for fleet budgets.
Now with EV specific algorithms, Flex Ops can take into account factors such as vehicle load profiles, hills, climate and charging requirements of specific vehicles to make electric vehicle transition successful.
By generating optimised routes for EV, Flex Ops can take the guess work out of planning EV transition, ensuring the vehicles being ordered can do the job they are assigned to.
“We’re helping Fleet Managers understand and simulate how to transition fleets over time.” says CEO and co-founder Richard Savoie, explaining that Adiona Tech can do more than optimising vehicle routes- they can look at a company operation and determine if light vehicle use such as E-Bike delivery is viable for a business.
“We’re currency involved in a trial in Paris”, says Savoie, “comparing small electric trucks, e-bikes, and on foot delivery in urban areas.”
By optimising for an electric fleet, operators can save time and money in their charging infrastructure as well, maximising dwell times in charging locations, and requiring lower powered chargers.
The platform, which has recently launched operations in North America, is subscription based, with a price scaled to fleet size.
