Break Location

[IAH]

Hi Experts,

Our customer is wants to create absences linked to a Location. So for example working hours are from 08:00 to 16:00 but technician has a doctor appointment from 11:00 to 12:00. Is there any direct way to assign a location for a Break?
I thought about 2 workarounds:
-> Create a fake Demand with max. priority and with an equipment that only that technician has.
-> Create 2 different vehicles in order to manage the start and End location for each of the periods of the working hours

Hope problem is understandable.

Any better idea?

Thank you in advance,
Ignacio

[Joost]

Create a fake Demand with max. priority and with an equipment that only that technician has.

This is what i recommend to my customers and it works pretty good.

There is one slight downside to this approach: it will mean that the vehicle in question will always be planned in. So for a day where you have a surplus in vehicles in relation to orders you might not get the most optimal result because it could be that the optimal solution is to no use the vehicle in question. That being said: in practice this rarely happens and most customer take the possible slightly less optimal planning for granted if it means they have a solution for dealing with theses kind of situations.

[IAH]

Perfect, thank you so much!
My worries with the planning are with this case:
Working Hours: 8 to 16 for example
Fake demand: from 8:15 to 10:00.

How the system will behave if from Start Location of the technician there is no time enough to reach the location of the demand? Will it assign it with a violation? Or should I use XDima to see how much time takes to reach that Break location (Fake Demand Location) and create the Demand time accordingly?

[Bernd Welter]

Cheerio,

if an input tour is violating constraints, e.g. because the driving time from "home" (starting at 09:00) to "the first location" (e.g. fixed appointment 09:30) is exceeding the schedule (driving time > 30min) then the input tour is violated. And violated input tours will

• be returned "as is" without any further stops being added/removed, sequences being changed
• be flagged as "violated" --> programmer can visualize the conflict, but the solution lies in the hands of the business layer.

Let me turn the question round:

• What behaviour would you expect from an API if the input is not solveable (by any API)?

Bernd

[IAH]

Hi Bernd,

Thank you so much for your answer.
You are totally right, but my question about system behavior was precisely because I did not think adding it as input plan but only create a unique combination of equipments (required from only fake Demand and available only for the technician of the break so only both match) and max priority.

Question is: without adding it as input plan, will it be assigned anyway but with violation ? or just not assigned?

Thank you so much for your support and sorry for my questions, just getting deeper bit a bit.

[Bernd Welter]

Hi Ignacio,

check this article Meaning of an input plan.
Though it is written in the context of xTour1 it gives valuable information, especially in the last section.

Bernd