Faba is a Finnish cooperative corporation, a livestock owners’ partner in cattle breeding, reproduction, health, and developing animal productivity. The route optimisation developed for Faba was ahead of its time, and its life cycle has been very long. Faba’s service manager, Aimo Manelius, has been involved in the development of route optimisation from the beginning, since the turn of the 1980s-90s.
“The need for route optimisation was great. There were many service points for making orders and also a large quantity of orders, so human-powered route optimisation was hard work. The optimisation also enabled the mergers of cooperatives and the expansion of routes beyond the former cooperative boundaries”, Manelius remembers.
Mtech has been a pioneer in route optimisation, developing and maintaining Faba’s AI-technician’s route optimisation for over 15 years. Faba uses route optimisation 360 days a year to optimise approximately 80 to 120 employees’ routes every day. AI-technician’s visit 700-1200 of farms daily, so the schedule for the animals to be inseminated each day is tight. The route optimisation made for Faba covers the entire geographical area of Finland.
Multiple integrations
Faba’s route optimisation has several integrations between animal and farm registers, order-handling solutions, breeding planning applications, detailed worklists in the AI-technician’s application, GIS information registries, and admin-level maps. This knowledge management is a powerful tool for running business processes more efficiently and proactively.
Savings for the environment and the company
“With the help of route optimisation, it was possible to increase order quantities and simultaneously reduce the number of service points for making the orders. When the program was developed, it was possible to take into account fixed AI-technician orders and guide a specific AI-technician to a certain farm. This can prevent, for example, the spread of animal disease situations. Equal treatment of employees was ensured when working days and driving distances became equal. Because Finland is so fragmented and there are many lakes in the country, it is possible to achieve large financial savings in Finland through route optimisation,” says Manelius.
Today, shorter routes and lower fuel consumption decrease the company’s costs and reduce emissions. The savings for the company are significant, as Faba saves on both salaries and fuel costs.
Better customer service
Manelius also says that customer service has improved considerably due to route optimisation and its integrations: “Customer wishes are taken into account in the route optimisation program. Additionally, the AI-technician’s work goes smoothly when farm and animal information, possible bull recommendations, previous inseminations, insemination times, and health information are already fetched into the program. This was possible through route optimisation and the integration of the WinSemi, software for order management”.
Better service for Faba’s customers is also possible, thanks to route optimisation, when the farm owners can be informed of AI-technician’s arrival times at the time and by the method requested by the customer.