Since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, the logistics industry has rallied to use its talent, technology and resources to help provide humanitarian aid to the people of Ukraine. Countless companies, both large and small, have played their part in the effort. This includes the PTV group, headed by CEO Christian U. Haas. The company’s services include a return on investment calculator for electric trucks, research in the area of smart city solutions, and specialist route planners for fleets.
The last of those has been made free for the purpose of aid delivery. To find out about how individuals, companies and NGOs can take up the offer, as well as some of the complexities involved in the relief effort, we reached out to Christian himself for a quick Q&A.
Hi Christian, thanks for talking to us. As part of your #StandWithUkraine campaign, you are offering free provision of our product for truck route planning, as well as the creation of optimized route plans for consolidation or distribution. To what extent can this help those providing aid, and how can aid transporters take advantage of this offer?
At PTV, we have more than 40 years of experience in the field of logistics. Our customers plan and optimize more than 30 million routes with our software every day.
So, the idea was obvious to make this expertise available in the current situation to support humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian population.
In a nutshell, the software helps to distribute goods in the best possible way among the available vehicles. Many of those organizations have plenty of vehicles, so PTV can perform milk runs for the consolidation of goods – and then we optimize those routes for the trucks and that saves time and kilometres as well.
Who has taken advantage of this so far?
The company has not yet revealed who has taken up the offer. But our message probably still needs some time to reach the various organizations.
Does the current situation in Ukraine make route planning within its borders almost impossible?
The current route optimization is certainly more difficult when roadblocks occur. However, if a planned route is not passable, the software quickly searches for suitable alternative routes.
Besides the above, is there anything the PTV Group is doing as part of its #StandWithUkraine campaign?
Within the framework of this action and beyond, we are available almost at any time to provide logistical advice to the aid organizations.
Directly within the circle of colleagues, various collection campaigns are underway. Each of us wants to do something good to support those in need in Ukraine.
There appears to be a number of difficulties at the moment getting the right aid to the right place and people, largely due to the fact so many individual actors are involved. Is there any way that these individual actions can be coordinated under one banner for optimal distribution?
Of course, it would be best to unite all transport service providers under one roof to ensure optimal distribution of relief supplies.
But the planning of such aid deliveries is very complex and the aid and supplies are – fortunately – so numerous that it is difficult to manage them centrally.
Above all, it is not possible to do so quickly. Certainly, there will be better organized transports in the future. For the moment, we hope our campaign will help us to ensure that aid supplies reach the people in Ukraine even more quickly and in a more coordinated manner.