Dealing manually with hundreds of deliveries…and hundreds of constraints
Grupo Danec is an Ecuadorian agro-industrial group that produces and commercialises oils, margarines, cooking fats, soaps, cleaning products, and other food products for both households and industrial clients.
The company operates across the whole value chain, from palm cultivation and oil processing to the manufacturing of consumer and industrial goods.
It is worth noting that Grupo Danec manages a large portion of its wholesale transport operations in Quito through manual planning.
This means logistics teams still need to adjust routes, vehicle assignments, and delivery schedules by hand and with a number of constraints:
- Restricted circulation rules like “Pico y Placa” (i.e. a vehicle circulation restriction system used in Quito to reduce traffic congestion during peak hours)
- Delivery time windows
- Priority customers
- Vehicle capacity
- Vehicle availability.
Therefore, however hard the Grupo Danec teams work, there is always a risk that trucks do not leave fully loaded, since delivery routes are harder to consolidate manually (“consolidate” refers to grouping multiple deliveries into the same truck route rather than sending separate vehicles for each order).
In other words, petrol consumption increases, and vehicles accumulate unnecessary mileage and maintenance needs.
The issue is aggravated by the lack of reliable real-time visibility over transport operations.
As a result, the teams can spend a lot of time reacting to disruptions rather than focusing on improving delivery coordination.
Fewer empty kilometres, fewer failed deliveries, fewer unnecessary transport costs
To help Grupo Danec improve its transport operations in Quito, QuadMinds provides a logistics optimisation platform focused on route planning and
vehicle allocation.
The platform automatically calculates delivery routes based on operational constraints that dispatch teams previously had to manage manually.
Besides, it also allows transport teams to dynamically adapt routes when operational conditions change during the day.
The system also gives Grupo Danec access to logistics KPIs, allowing teams to monitor:
- Fleet activity: Vehicle utilisation rates, etc.
- Delivery execution: Completed, delayed, missed deliveries.
- Route indicators: Total distance travelled, number of stops per route, time spent per route, etc.
Another functionality allows teams to simulate different scenarios. By way of illustration, when a truck is restricted by “Pico y Placa”, planners simulate reallocating deliveries to other vehicles before dispatch.
Hence (and this is not an exhaustive list), such a solution yields concrete consequences for Grupo Danec’s costs:
- Higher truck utilisation reduces the cost per delivered unit
- Fewer failed deliveries reduce re-delivery costs.
- Optimised routing reduces total kilometres driven, cutting fuel and vehicle maintenance costs.
Lastly, the solution offers significant scalability potential for Grupo Danec. The group can add more vehicles, routes, and orders without increasing manual planning effort or coordination complexity.
The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator support: Setting up the pilot and scaling it
- Service n°1: PoC design & Prototyping
This service helps Grupo Danec and QuadMinds structure and test the pilot project before making larger deployment decisions.
The partnership will define in particular:
– Operational objectives (e.g. increase the number of deliveries managed per dispatcher)
– KPIs (e.g. reduction in empty kilometres travelled)
– Responsibilities of each partner (e.g. QuadMinds could be in charge of platform configuration while Grupo Danec would deliver feedback from real operational use).
This allows both companies to “de-risk” the solution: it will test whether the logistics solution delivers measurable operational improvements under real business conditions before committing to a larger deployment budget.
- Service n°2: Scaling into corporate structures
This service can be considered as the sequel to the first one.
It helps the partnership evaluate how the solution could move from a pilot project to broader operational deployment.
Through workshops and operational analysis, both companies assess elements such as:
– Expansion risks (typically, the platform could perform well in one city but face difficulties in different traffic or delivery conditions)
– Operational requirements (users must be trained to use the tool)
– Financial implications (additional operational costs linked to system integration, onboarding, and staff training)
This allows Grupo Danec and QuadMinds to build a shared roadmap for expanding the solution beyond the initial pilot operations.
- Service n°3: Access funding
This service helps QuadMinds and Grupo Danec to identify financing opportunities to support the next stages of the project after the pilot phase.
The support includes:
– Reviewing whether the project qualifies for European, Latin American, or Caribbean innovation funding programmes
– Identifying grants, loans, or investment opportunities linked to logistics
– Advising on how to structure the project financially for future deployment phases
In practice, the objective is to help QuadMinds and Grupo Danec to move beyond the pilot project and prepare the financial foundations for larger commercial deployment opportunities.
Better routing for Grupo Danec & Stronger commercial credibility in Latin America
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🚚 GRUPO DANEC |
📊 QUADMINDS |
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