Usecase LONG DISTANCE OVERNIGHT

[Bernd Welter]

Hello together,

some days ago two independent players assked me whether it is possible to modell the following usecase with our xTour:

• SALES REP is located several hundred kilometers away from his area to be serviced.
• Planning scope is a complete week including overnight stays.
• Reaching the service area requires even more than a whole day.

What the customers expected is a result where the SALES REP spends one or two days to get into the service area, then spends some time on the customers and finally spends another day or even more for the return back home.

Well, this is possible. What you have to consider is the following parameter set:

• use a proper scale between the driving/distance related costs (costPerKilometer, costPerHour...) of the vehicle compared to the hotel (costPerOvernightStay) and loss of profit (costPerUnplannedCustomer)
• Because: If the costs per unplanned customer are lower than the money you have to spend to get into the service area it is better not to schedule anybody

Check the screenshots for further details.

Best regards Bernd

overall visualization of 6 sales reps and their 6 service areas. Sevilia/Malaga are even further away from the simulated czech customers than the sales reps in Barcelona and Zaragoza.

As you can see in the close view the blue,red, black and grey sales reps manage to visit some of their customers (not 100%) while the golden and the green sales reps do not visit anybody.

Here is the schedule for the BARCELONA sales rep (grey). As you can see in the second row the transfer from Barcelona to the grey area requires more then 2 days of driving so there is only a slim budget of time available for the WEDNESDAY visits.
I achieved this by setting the costs per unscheduled customer to a very high value (100000) while the costs per distance / period are rather low (1).