Planning and execution of operations at Grupo Senda
Aleph5 built Senda Logic for Grupo Senda: models and algorithms that plan, schedule, execute, and reschedule units and drivers across Senda Federal and Senda Citi, with road safety rules built into the model.
- Client
- Grupo Senda · Senda Federal and Senda Citi (Mexico)
- Industry
- Passenger and personnel transportation
- Evaluation
- 2017, search for optimization tools
- Solution
- Senda Logic: planning, scheduling, execution, rescheduling
- Constraints
- Unit types, driver skills, road safety, maintenance
Who they are
Grupo Senda is one of Mexico's largest corporations in people mobility services, a sector leader thanks to its accumulated experience and its culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
Its Senda Federal division provides transportation services across a wide geography of Mexican territory. Senda Citi provides personnel transportation to companies in several cities.
The challenge
The group's logistics system was obsolete and incomplete: processes took days when the operation needed minutes, deliverables did not arrive in time to decide, and the demand for technology resources seemed endless.
The logistics team must determine required resources and assign specific units and drivers while keeping plans optimal, across a large number of variables: unit types and models, driver skills, compliance with road safety rules, operational status, and maintenance.
At Senda Citi, even though contracted services are known in advance, daily needs and resource availability change every day, which forces scheduling operations daily and moving units between cities to make the most of the fleet.
“We had a deficient, incomplete logistics system that was already obsolete. Processing times were not satisfactory: it was processing that took days when we needed it to take minutes.”
The solution
Grupo Senda evaluated several market alternatives without finding a tool that met all its expectations. Upon evaluating Aleph5's proposal, it granted the trust to develop Senda Logic.
- Representative models covering every stage: design, resource planning, scheduling, execution, and rescheduling.
- Consideration of the business's objectives, practices, and constraints, with particular emphasis on road safety rules, which had not been integrated before.
- Response times that allow alternatives to be analyzed and solutions generated in minutes instead of hours of processing with the previous algorithms.
- Integration with the group's administrative tools and information interfaces.
Results
Senda Logic runs today as the backbone of Senda Citi's daily operation and has proven to be a highly valuable tool for decision-making and for complying with the company's safety policies.
Development followed a methodology that let the Senda Logística and Senda IT teams take part in every stage alongside Aleph5. A key factor was the active support of senior management, which set the project's expectations and regularly followed up on progress and results.
Why Aleph5
In 2017 Grupo Senda began searching for and evaluating tools that would optimize decision-making and make daily execution more efficient, as part of a group-wide digital transformation.
What set Aleph5 apart was not the technology itself, but the ability to mathematically model the problem the group wanted to solve.
“Many of the proposals we received had a more technological focus. Aleph5's differentiator is that the technology was there, but the capability and competence for developing mathematical models was where the focus of what we wanted to solve actually was. It has been a partnership, not a vendor relationship.”
Testimonial
The group's IT director and the operations directors of Senda Federal and Senda Citi share the challenges they faced in planning and resource utilization:
Questions about this case
What is Senda Logic?
The solution built by Aleph5 to support planning, scheduling, execution, and rescheduling of Grupo Senda's transportation operations.
What rules were considered?
Road safety rules, unit types, driver skills, operational status, maintenance, and company-specific criteria.
Which divisions use it?
Senda Federal, in passenger transportation, and Senda Citi, in personnel transportation for companies.
“If you want the POWER to improve, Measure… if you want to Improve, Model.”
Peter Drucker
Proven in real operations
Arauco, Grupo Senda, Vitro, and Flecha Amarilla make daily decisions with Aleph5 models.