Vehicle tour-planning

Sequence optimization for 1 vehicle via Rest API for Europe

(passengers, freight, service orders)

Vehicle tour-planning solves the sequence problem, taking into account capacity constraints such as volume, payload, service times and max. driver’s steering and rest periods. The product is capable of delivering predetermined cargo, passengers and service tasks in a cost-minimized approach. Weights with loaded- and empty-kilometers are taken into account. Suitable for cargo, passenger and service tasks on trucks, vans and cars. Many to many with random pick up and delivery stops i.e. depot to customer, customer to depot, customer to customer in one optimization run. Suitable for inbound, outbound, just-in-time for FTL (full truck load) and LTL (less-than-truckload).

Builds on the value-based routing engine and also returns the routing instructions in addition to a pure sequence as a solution.

Available Features

■ Daily scheduling/vehicle route planning/route optimization with detailed turn-by-turn routing
■ Can be used for freight orders, service orders and passengers
■ Round trips (same start and end stop), (multiple) pickup and delivery (pick up ‘n delivery)
■ optimized loading order
■ Time window (e.g. opening times, ramp times), payload, free loading area/seats, etc
■ EUROPE Car & Truck map material, driver profiles and tolls (tolls only available in Germany)
■ Working time restrictions with driving and rest times for drivers (e.g. a 20min break after 120 minutes of 480 minutes working time)
■ Different loading and unloading times or service times for each stop
■ Calculation of ETA (expected time of arrival)
■ Cost calculation for the tours (heterogeneous vehicle fleets, e.g. cars, 3.5t, 40t)
■ Cost-optimized dispatching, not shortest/fastest routes with loaded and empty kilometers
■ Goods to be transported can be freely defined (payload, volume, parking spaces, seats, units, etc.)

You need a solution for a fleet? Please look for the Fleet Trip Planning product.

Order optimization is a very complex problem. Even for a delivery from a depot with 1 vehicle and 10 stops there are over 3 million possible solutions that need to be calculated and compared, with 11 stops over 39 million and with 15 stops over 1.3 trillion (1300 billion). The secondary conditions such as volume, payload, minimum costs, steering and rest times etc. complicate the problem exponentially, especially when it comes to Capacitated Vehicle Routing problems, i.e. pickups or deliveries can have different locations for all freight and the loading area or volume are limited. Only complex heuristics and algorithms help here, even supercomputers would need several years to solve the problem optimally.


Load- and empty-kilometers

With the introduction of weight-based planning, tours can suddenly turn around. Loaded and empty kilometers and their corresponding different costs can make a big difference.