London-based company will take product to new levels

January 14, 2011 -- MapMechanics is pleased to announce its acquisition of TruckStops and OptiSite from MicroAnalytics, Inc., US-based developer of the systems, which MapMechanics has distributed in the United Kingdom for nearly 20 years. MapMechanics has acquired all rights to the products, and has been assigned all existing user licenses worldwide.

TruckStops is the world’s most widely-deployed and best-established vehicle routing and scheduling optimisation systems and OptiSite is the associated network modelling system commonly used for depot site location and optimisation of customer allocation.

 “This represents an exciting development for our customers and for the whole routing and scheduling optimisation market,” said Mary Short, Chairman of MapMechanics, who will take overall charge of future TruckStops business.

MicroAnalytics has always strongly supported its UK market base, and in association with MapMechanics the company has included numerous localisation features to reflect the specific requirements of UK users.

By acquiring the products outright, MapMechanics now plans to advance this localisation to a new level, adapting the core products to match users’ business needs and operating conditions even more closely. This direct product involvement will engender further development of TruckStops and OptiSite, which will also continue to embody all the functionality of the existing products, while gaining a range of new features - taking the systems into their next generation.

The company will continue to provide full support to users and Mike Hooban, founder and president of MicroAnalytics, will help ensure continuity by working alongside the MapMechanics development team.

TruckStops vehicle routing and scheduling has been adopted by many leading names including organisations as diverse as UPS Logistics, Wincanton, Gregory Distribution, Owens Corning, Alliance Boots, Solaglas, Fenland Laundries, Richard Burbidge and Spicers.

MapMechanics has developed a range of related products such as solutions for full-load optimisation, and for determining which traffic to deliver in-house and which items to pass to external contractors. In future, these products will be integrated more tightly into the core TruckStops product, forming components of an expanding TruckStops solutions suite.

“We see this acquisition as the start of a whole new phase for TruckStops,” Mary Short says. “Our TruckStops sales have already been growing, and under MapMechanics’ management we expect to see that growth accelerating sharply.”

About TruckStops

TruckStops is a fully featured, flexible, easy-to-use, single- and multi-depot routing and scheduling optimisation solution. It enables users to plan the movements of people or goods automatically – either every day, reflecting the specific delivery tasks for that day, or on a fixed basis where routes change little over time. It is frequently also used to model alternative delivery scenarios, helping users to determine the optimum number and location of depots and fleet size. TruckStops can take account of numerous special requirements such as available drivers’ hours, call duration, load size and weight, delivery time windows, special driver skills and vehicle configuration details, and has numerous reporting options.

About MapMechanics

• MapMechanics has been providing innovative solutions in logistics planning, sales and marketing, digital mapping and geographic analysis for over twenty years.
• MapMechanics develops, supplies and supports TruckStops, one of the world’s best-established routing and scheduling solutions, and its portfolio includes a wide range of optimisation solutions. Examples include specialist systems for optimising transport of full or part loads, for servicing a high density of calls on the same streets and for optimising use of pallet networks.
• MapMechanics is the UK distributor of the GeoConcept geographic information system, which is used extensively in a diverse range of fields such as depot planning, retail planning, marketing, healthcare, environmental planning and management, transport and logistics, site selection and territory allocation, telematics and command and control applications, policing and broadcasting, and central and local government.
• MapMechanics also uses digital map-based technologies to offer an extensive range of Web, desktop, paper and component solutions for a variety of business applications, from atlas production to business analysis, site selection, customer profiling and vehicle routing and scheduling.
• MapMechanics distributes a wide range of data products including AA, NAVTEQ and Ordnance Survey digital mapping, as well as leading business and demographic datasets from many sources throughout the world. This data is listed in the Data Catalogue, which is probably the most extensive and up-to-date printed listing of its kind in Britain, and is published at least once a year, as well as being available on the Internet.
• Backing up its extensive product range, MapMechanics offers a comprehensive service of implementation support and training.

For further information and pictures please contact:
Katy McKenna
MapMechanics
Canal Court, 155 High Street,
Brentford, London, TW8 8JA
Email: Email Contact
Tel: +44 (020) 8568 7000 Fax:+44 (020) 8568 7400