Tours over several days?

[couplink-dev]

Hello there,

Some of our orders are so far away from the depot that we can’t reach them within a single working day without violating the maximum driving time. This causes them to remain unscheduled and even the vehicle is not used. Is it possible to parametrize the transaction in a way that a vehicle starts on a first day, delivers some of the orders, stays away from the depot over the night and continues the tour the next day incl. delivering some more orders on its way back? What are the required parameters for such a scenario?

Best regards,
Tim

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Tim,

the answer depends on the interface you want to use:

xTour1 provides a vehicle property "toursMustFitIntoSingleOperatingInterval":

• toursMustFitIntoSingleOperatingInterval=true: the vehicle has to return to the depot by the end of an interval. This is what happens if you restrict the driver to return on a single day.

  

  Driver has to return on each day. Therefore two tours are created

• toursMustFitIntoSingleOperatingInterval=false: the vehicle doesn't have to return within each interval but is allowed to stay outside.

  

  Driver can remain away from the depot at the end of the first interval.

• Furthermore we even offer a specific usecase or method which is called planOvernight: this special function decides on a financial base whether staying outside is better (compares distaance based savings with additional hotel based costs).

  

  Overnight usecase: Hotel cheap but TUESDAY belongs to family (want to be home)? Two partial tours:
  tour 1=MON morning to TUE evening.
  tour 2=WED morning to FRI evening.

Within xTour 2 the Driver has a property operatingIntervals[] which is restricted to 1 element (within 2.9, this is subject to change - please check the latest API DOC) and so an overnight stay isn't possible at the moment (Dec. 2018): https://xserver2-europe-eu-test.cloud.p ... our.Driver

Does this answer your question?

Best regards,
Bernd