ISL is the UK distributor for RouteSmart™ software but also offers a routing service for clients who not wish to operate it themselves.

RouteSmart™ is the world leader in high-density routing. It is widely used internationally in the following fields:

• Public Services: waste collection, street sweeping, winter maintenance
• Meter reading
• Postal delivery
• Newspaper, magazine and brochure delivery
• Building and other (e.g. environmental health) inspection

It is a map-based, precision routing solution designed for the unique needs of the solid waste industry. It creates routes based on actual street network maps - not simple address lists or 'crow-flies' distances. Most importantly, it doesn't just create the shortest routes but actually balances the workload between the routes.

It can take account of practical constraints: one way streets, turn restrictions, speed limits, weight restrictions, restricted access times, driver's working hours restrictions and many more. Importantly, it can handle very large numbers of customer service locations, as are found in household waste collection applications. It can also account for side-of-street service collection constraints, vehicle capacities, compaction ratios and trips to treatment/disposal facilities in addition to many other health and safety considerations. It works by automatically balancing and consolidating routes. The output consists of detailed driving directions and maps of collection areas as well as individual routes.

The essential principle of RouteSmart™ is that it can evaluate a waste collection routing task from a geographic perspective and, by an iterative process, determine the optimum number of balanced "partitions" (which correspond to a group of vehicle routes for each day) into which it should be divided, depending on the criteria that are established. Within each partition, it can then determine the optimum number of routes and then calculate the optimum vehicle travel path. It can work using vehicles of just one type but can also optimise the routes using groups of vehicles of different sizes and capacities (e.g. two 8 wheelers and four 6 wheelers).

Productivity improvements ranging from 5% to 15% are typical when using RouteSmart, although even larger improvements have been achieved on occasions. This provides very substantial cost savings - year after year. At a waste partnership in the Midlands, we identified savings of more than half a million pounds p.a. - without any joint working. With joint working, the potential was greater than £1 million. In an authority in the Northeast, we demonstrated a productivity improvement of 35% for street sweeping on a like-for-like basis.

RouteSmart™ can enable the consideration of a large number of "what if?" situations in a relatively short space of time, such as the effect of:

• Integrating new properties
• Using vehicles of different capacity
• Change of disposal point
• Change of depot location
• Changes to the road layout
• Changes in working hours or days

Our clients include the councils in Braintree, Colchester, Corby, Daventry, East Northamptonshire, Fenland, Guildford, Hambleton, Kettering, Leeds, Newcastle, Northampton, North Kesteven, Spelthorne, South Northamptonshire and Wellingborough.