Avoid inefficient tours / minimum orders per tour

[Bernd Welter]

HI there,

I've been asked whether it is possible to set a "minimum number of orders" per vehicle in a planning. This was driven by the user's experience of output tours which contained "vehicle XYZ serves only two parcels and this is completely inefficient".
Customers expectation:

Could we define a minimum number of stops? Or ensure that such orders are done through alternative vehicles where we know the driver can spend one additional hour?

Based on the current cost factors my personal approach to this would be (e.g. if I want to simulate some "at least 5 orders!") : choose a meaningful balance between

• an orders outsourcing cost (e.g. 20€)
• a vehicle's fixed costs (e.g. 100€)

With these values given a

• Vehicle serves only 4 orders would cause the cost metric to contribute with "outsourcing the 4 orders is cheaper than handling them with the vehicle"
• Important to know:

  • outsourcingCost: Defines the cost for not scheduling the order on a route. This cost is weighed against the cost of scheduling the order on a route. When omitted the optimization will try to schedule the order regardless of the added cost.

    - this value is optional, the default would insist on serving the orders which is possible but inefficient.

  • Vehicle.costs.fixed: Defines the cost for not scheduling the order on a route. This cost is weighed against the cost of scheduling the order on a route. When omitted the optimization will try to schedule the order regardless of the added cost.

    - also the fixed costs are optional. If orders are "located" close to the depot (or the effort based costs are cheap) the "free of fixed costs"-vehicles would try to serve.

I hope this approach sounds promising to you.

I also expect that we forward more and more Optiflow SaaS cost parameters to the PTV Developer Optiflow API.

Bernd