Advancing the leading edge of distribution management

Existing route planning tools have recently failed, particularly in applications with a very large number of stops, such as newspaper distribution and waste collection. Better tools for route planning will make drastic savings in transport costs and planning time. In Effekt, we improve state-of-the-art in vehicle routing technology, and move the leading edge of transportation management systems by integrating new, more powerful route optimizers.

Effekt is a three year inter-Nordic research and technology development project in the period 2008-2011. The main goal is to significantly improve logistics performance in distribution services with a very large number of stops.

We develop an integrated prototype for automated planning of routes for distribution of media products. The innovative Effekt results are exploited by 4 end users, and commercialized and disseminated internationally through 2 technology providers.

The end user partners in Effekt are Aftenposten Distribusjon AS, Edda Media AS, Mediapost AS, and Romerike MediaDistribusjon AS. The technology providers are Distribution Innovation AS (Effekt project owner) and Norkart AS.

Agora Innoroad Laboratories at the University of Jyväskylä and SINTEF ICT are the two research partners in Effekt.

Effekt is partly funded by the Smartrans Programme of the Research Council of Norway.