The Challenge
Hovis has been baking bread from the finest ingredients for more than 130 years and is an iconic and well-loved British bakery brand. From Richard ’Stony’ Smith’s discovery of how to separate the wheatgerm from flour without losing any nutrients during milling, to replacing horses and carts with trucks, the company has continued to innovate.
It continues to expand and diversify its product range, embrace new manufacturing processes and, as part of its logistics operation, champions the latest technologies including deploying two zero emission electric vehicles in London and utilising market-leading transport, delivery execution and mobility solutions.
Hovis is a baking business owned by Endless LLP based in High Wycombe. The company employs 2,800 people in eight bakeries, one flourmill and three distribution centres across the UK. Hovis Logistics completes circa 1.2 million customer deliveries per year, deploying a fleet of 250 trailers and approximately 400 vehicles ranging in size from 7.2 up to 15 tons.
Hovis was already using a telematics system across its fleet but went to market and in 2015 opted for the Microlise connected solution.
The Approach
Hovis initially deployed a Microlise telematics solution to support improved fleet safety and utilisation and driver performance.
Since 2015, Hovis has added Journey Management to the solution, making particular use of the Schedule Execution Board to enhance customer communication and understand how the fleet is performing against plan with clear colour codes indicating early, on-time and late ETAs.
The Safety Module, including forward facing cameras and Incident Analysis has also been deployed as has the Microlise sign on glass, Proof of Delivery solution.