recently I've been asked whether our tour planning software is able to cover the following scenarios regarding the assignment of depots (parametrization of depotIdStart and depotIdEnd is mentioned below).
Here are the different usage scenarios:
- Round trips - start and end of a tour is at the same depot (startDepotID==endDepotID, startDepotID>0). Driver gets back to the depot at the end of a tour.
- Open end trips - either tour starts at depot but ends at customer (startDepotID>0 and endDepotID==-1). Usually meaningful if the driver doesn't get paid for the final section from last customer back to the depot.
- Open start trips - either tour starts at a customer but ends at the depot (startDepotID==-1 and endDepotID>0). Usually meaningful if the driver doesn't get paid for the initial section from depot to first customer.
- Open trips - mixture of the scenarios above: start and end of a tour is somewhere at a customer (startDepotID==-1 and endDepotID==-1). Usually required if the driver doesn't get paid for the section from depot to first customer and his way from the last customer to the depot.
- Inter depot trips - tour starts at depot and ends at depot but the depots are different (startDepotID>0 and endDepotID>0 and startDepotID!=endDepotID)
I also attached some images that demonstrate the given tour structures.
In xTour1 the relevant properties are
com.ptvag.xserver.xtour.AbstractVehicle:
- AbstractVehicle.depotIdStart int The unique key to identify the related start depot clearly (> 0). The start depot is the site where the vehicle is located before performing tours. -1 means that the tour starts from the first TransportPoint and not from a given start depot. 0 is an illegal value, other negative values are reserved for future use, but the behavior is undefined yet.
- AbstractVehicle.depotIdEnd int The unique key to identify the related end depot clearly (> 0). The end depot is the site where the vehicle is located after performing tours. -1 means that the tour ends at the last TransportPoint and not at a given end depot. 0 is an illegal value, other negative values are reserved for future use, but the behavior is undefined yet.
- Vehicle.startLocationId String no - 2.1 ID of the vehicle's start location. May be a vehicle location or a site. Opening intervals and service times are not considered for a vehicle's start location. If no start location is specified, it is assumed that the vehicle is available at the first stop.
- Vehicle.endLocationId String no - 2.1 ID of the vehicle's end location. May be a vehicle location or a site. Opening intervals and service times are not considered for a vehicle's end location. If no end location is specified, it is assumed that the vehicle remains at the last stop.
Bernd