Mexico’s Traxión Will Save 1,580 Metric Tons of Emissions and USD2.5M in Costs Once Transport Operations Are Fully Optimized Using FICO Platform

MEXICO CITY – May 12, 2022 – FICO (NYSE: FICO)

Highlights:

• Traxión reduced deadhead trips by 2.9 million kilometers
• Traxión expects to reduce costs by USD$2.5M, cut emissions and minimize fleet wear and tear using FICO route optimization 
• The company will decrease empty trips for its vehicles by 20 percent
• Traxión won a 2022 FICO® Decisions Award for ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Champion

Traxión, the leading mobility and logistics company in Mexico, has used FICO route optimization technology to help it use fewer vehicles, save on fuel costs, cut emissions and reduce fleet wear and tear. The company has already saved 2.9 million kilometers in travel, USD$725,000 in costs and 458 metric tons of emissions after implementing just 11% of the optimal solution. Traxión is on track to reduce empty trips by 20 percent which will save it over 10 million kilometers, USD$2.5M in costs and an impressive 1,580 metric tons of emissions once its operations are fully optimized.

Traxión was able to see a rapid return on investment by implementing the optimization capability within FICO® Platform, a cloud-based decisioning platform that allows companies to centralize and operationalize advanced analytics at speed.
More information: https://www.fico.com/en/products/fico-xpress-optimization

“Designing our logistics planning based on an algorithm was a turning point in the way the company operates,” said Vicente Quiroga Garcia, director of operational excellence at Traxión. “Our team now has all the tools and techniques needed to conduct a large amount of analysis using various scenarios and generate the best route — one that is transparent, fair, and much more efficient in the allocation of units, operators, and kilometers.”

Prior to the implementation, Traxión ’s business leaders knew that the spreadsheet-based program they were using to develop routes and schedules was falling short, as shown by the large number of “deadhead” kilometers; travel by trucks and buses without a cargo or passenger load. 

In addition, the spreadsheet macros were often difficult to use, and did not allow for easy integration of new rules and constraints. This was a significant disadvantage during the COVID-19 pandemic, as protocols regarding vehicle disinfection plus physical distancing among employee groups frequently changed the number of routes required. 

The optimization of transportation logistics at Traxión was a complex undertaking. An accurate and efficient schedule was needed to fairly distribute workloads for drivers and comply with labor agreements regarding shift length and workdays per week. The solution also needed to meet specific customer requirements, such as driver experience, vehicle features such as air conditioning, and the possibility of applying the customer logo or branding to the bus.

Optimization also needed to account for unforeseeable complications, such as vehicle breakdowns and traffic delays, that impact routing and need to be resolved quickly. At the heart of all these factors is the “Rubik’s Cube” of the routes themselves. 

“In the initial phase of the FICO solution integration, Traxión deployed 700 buses from two depots in a municipality to cover 3,300 service routes,” said Garcia. “The second phase was more complex, expanding to 21 municipalities.” 

Importantly, when it came to implementation at Traxión the route changes needed to be gradual. Just because an optimization solution can be modelled, does not mean that it can be deployed 100% overnight. 

“Drivers pick up passengers, not packages, so passengers need to know the driver and they need to know where to go every week,” added Garcia. “To accommodate this very real human aspect we created a threshold parameter that business users applied to avoid dramatic schedule changes. Schedules were optimized by say, five percent a week, until they reached a point where the solution was 100% optimal.” 

So far, Traxión has deployed eleven percent of the optimization solution to 16 out of 19 units. This includes 5,953 buses and 176,109 total services. The largest unit has 19,000 services. At this level of optimization, the Traxión team has already saved 2.9 million kilometers. 

The advances in optimization are also contributing significantly to Traxión’s emissions reductions, with 458 metric tons of emissions saved after implementing just 11% of the optimal solution and 1,580 metric tons of emissions expected once its operations are fully optimized. Every kilometer driven by a bus takes 30 cars out of operation, so with a fleet of 6,200 efficiently routed buses, 186,000 cars are kept off the roads saving 1.6 million metric tons of emissions.

“In less than a year, Traxión has improved analytic efficiency and speed to insights by 80 percent,” said Nikhil Behl chief marketing officer at FICO. “This has enabled them to make remarkable improvements while responding to pandemic conditions, which is quite a feat. Their work with optimization shows the potential of FICO’s prescriptive analytics to help firms meet ESG goals and make the world healthier.” 
For its achievements, Traxión won a 2022 FICO® Decisions Award for ESG Champion.

“The problem that Traxión was trying to solve was very complex,” said Sheila Leverone, chief marketing officer at eDriving and one of the FICO Decisions Awards judges. “There are a multitude of factors that go into a transportation network optimization such as this. It was obvious that there was some careful thinking by Traxión around the operational considerations and the incremental approach needed to move towards the optimal solution.”

About Traxión 
Traxión is the leading mobility and logistics company in Mexico. Traxión integrates highly recognised brands: Muebles y Mudanzas (MYM); Transportadora Egoba; Grupo SID; Auto Express Frontera Norte (AFN); LIPU, Redpack and Autotransportes El Bisonte, Traxión Logitics and Traxporta. It has the broadest portfolio through which it offers a unique and integral solution of cargo and logistics, and personnel and student transportation, consolidating as a one-stop solution.

Traxión is the first ground transportation company on the Mexican Stock Exchange, consolidating as the link between the financial sector and the logistics industry of the country.

About the FICO® Decisions Awards
The FICO Decisions Awards recognize organizations that are achieving remarkable success using FICO solutions. A panel of independent judges with deep industry expertise evaluates nominations based upon measurable improvement in key metrics; demonstrated use of best practices; project scale, depth and breadth; and innovative uses of technology. The 2022 judges are:

• Sidhartha Dash, research director at Chartis 
• Paul Deall, head of risk, mortgages at Westpac (previous winner) 
• Senthil Erulappan, director, product engineering for merchant, risk and collections at FIS
• Armando Junior, general manager, risk and compliance at Dock (previous winner)
• Sheila Leverone, chief marketing officer at eDriving (previous winner)
• Sibulelo Ncamani, head of operational risk and governance at Absa Bank (previous winner) 
• Graham Rand, operational researcher and editor of Impact 
• Dinesh Suresh, head, digital builds for consumer secured lending at OCBC Bank (previous winner)

The winners of the FICO Decisions Awards will be spotlighted at and win tickets to FICO® World 2022, the Decisions Conference, May 2022 in Orlando, Florida.

About FICO
FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 200 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 120 countries do everything from protecting 2.6 billion payment cards from fraud, to helping people get credit, to ensuring that millions of airplanes and rental cars are in the right place at the right time.
Learn more at www.fico.com.

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