Our transportation team is debating the balance between automated load building and manual intervention in MASC 2023.2. The load builder does a solid job with standard shipments - we’re seeing 87% cube utilization and good route efficiency. However, we’re finding that roughly 15-20% of loads require manual replanning due to customer-specific requirements, time windows, or equipment constraints that the automation doesn’t handle well.
The question is how much exception handling should be built into automated workflows versus when to just let planners manually override. Our current approach has planners reviewing every automated load before release, which somewhat defeats the efficiency gains. Looking for perspectives on automated vs manual load building approaches, how others handle exception scenarios in their workflows, and what rules-based automation works best for capturing the edge cases. Has anyone successfully implemented a ‘trust but verify’ model where most loads release automatically but exceptions are flagged for review?
Your 15-20% exception rate is actually pretty normal for complex operations. The question isn’t whether to eliminate exceptions but how to handle them efficiently. We implemented a tiered workflow: automated loads that meet all hard constraints auto-release, those that violate soft constraints go to junior planners for quick review, and those with multiple violations or high-value customers go to senior planners. This distributes the workload appropriately and maintains quality where it matters most.
We tried full automation and it was a disaster - too many customer complaints about missed time windows and wrong equipment. Now we use automation for initial load building but require planner approval before dispatch. The automation does the heavy lifting (consolidation, routing), but experienced planners catch the nuances. It’s a hybrid approach that maintains efficiency while ensuring quality. Our planners can review and approve 40-50 loads per hour versus building 8-10 manually.
We use a confidence scoring system. Each automated load gets a score (0-100) based on how well it meets all constraints. Loads scoring above 90 auto-release without review, 75-90 get flagged for quick review, below 75 require full manual planning. The scoring algorithm considers cube utilization, route efficiency, constraint violations, and customer priority. This lets about 60% of our loads release automatically while catching the problematic ones.