In mid-market transportation operations, the experienced dispatcher often remains the decision layer that connects systems, exceptions, and operating judgment.
Transportation planning is often treated as an optimization problem.
Give the system the orders, constraints, assets, drivers, delivery windows, and cost parameters, and the system should produce the plan. In stable operations, that approach can work.
But a recent conversation with Luuk Kuijpers, co-founder of Logicplan, pointed to a more practical issue.
In many mid-market transportation operations, the real planning system is still the experienced dispatcher.
The Dispatcher as the Decision Layer
Logicplan was founded after field research with dispatchers and planners. Kuijpers said the company spoke with more than 50 dispatchers to understand how they actually work.
What they found was fragmented information and judgment-intensive decision-making.
Dispatchers pull information from TMS screens, spreadsheets, emails, customer messages, phone calls, WhatsApp threads, and memory. They are not only building routes. They are coordinating transportation operations under time pressure.
An experienced dispatcher may know which customer can tolerate a shifted delivery window, which driver is best suited to a difficult stop, which exception requires escalation, and which constraint can be worked around.
Much of that knowledge is not documented. It sits in the head of someone who has seen thousands of exceptions over many years. That makes the dispatcher essential, but it also creates risk.
Why This Is Not Just a Solver Problem
One useful point from the conversation was Logicplan’s view that not every transportation planning challenge is a classical optimization problem.
Optimization tools can work well when operations are standardized and constraints are clear. Logicplan is focused on mid-sized transportation companies, including groupage, less-than-truckload, special transport, and construction-related transport, where planning depends heavily on company-specific judgment.
In these settings, planners may have access to automation tools but still do much of the work manually. That does not necessarily mean the tools are weak. It may mean the tools do not capture enough operating context.
The planner is not only calculating. The planner is recognizing patterns.
Above the TMS, Not Instead of It
Logicplan is not positioning itself as a TMS replacement.
Kuijpers was clear that the TMS remains the operational backbone. Logicplan’s role is to sit above and alongside the TMS as an intelligence and execution layer.
The system integrates with existing tools, builds operational context, and supports dispatchers in making decisions. In some cases, that may mean surfacing recommendations. In others, it may mean helping the planner work through a disruption interactively.
Over time, as the system captures more context and decision history, more automation may be possible. But the near-term value proposition is not to remove the dispatcher.
It is to make the dispatcher’s judgment more transferable and scalable.
The Knowledge Capture Challenge
The hard part is not only connecting to a TMS. It is capturing judgment.
A useful decision system needs to understand not only what decision was made, but why it made sense at the time.
What was the operating context? What options were considered? What did the planner know about the customer, driver, shipment, or prior exception? Which constraint was real, and which one was negotiable?
This matters because many transportation companies rely on planners whose experience is difficult to replace. When those planners retire, leave, or are unavailable, some of the operating logic leaves with them.
Bottom Line
The Logicplan conversation points to a gap in many transportation operations.
Systems of record hold data. Visibility platforms show events. Optimization engines solve defined problems. But many operational decisions still happen between those systems.
That is where planners use incomplete data, customer knowledge, exception history, and practical judgment.
Logicplan is early and is working with pilot customers. Its initial focus is mid-market transportation companies in the Netherlands, with European expansion planned. The larger issue is familiar across logistics: transportation planning is often a judgment-intensive process, not only a system calculation.
The post A Recent Conversation with Logicplan: Transportation Planning Beyond the TMS appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints.