Concrete maker Boral’s trucks make 10,000 deliveries a day, and new boss Vik Bansal reckons he has already found a way to make 20 per cent more dispatches without investing an extra dollar of capital., with a bit of grey hair and experience running old-world industrial businesses.The way he sees it, Boral moves 14 million tonnes of goods a year.
The logistics revamp includes an automated dispatch program, using artificial intelligence to schedule deliveries and handle variables such as traffic, road closures and customer order changes in real time. Each truck’s three to four deliveries could be four to five, which translates to a significant capacity increase without any additional capital costs.
But it also means Boral’s network is flat out fulfilling orders from 7am until lunchtime, and lays idle in the afternoons when traffic is typically lighter and deliveries could be made more quickly.What if Boral could offer discounts on early-afternoon pours, offering cheaper concrete to customers and making better use of its idle capacity? It works that way in some markets in the United States.