Why does cost optimized tour look expensive?

[Bernd Welter]

I recently played around with the new v2.27 experimental feature "enableMonetaryCostMinimization" and faced some results I wasn't able to explain at first - once I talked to DEV it was easy to solve and it is not a bug. In fact it is a future feature

As you might have seen the new cost optimized routing offers three monetary factors that are used int the target function:

• fixedCost
• distanceCOst
• travelTimeCost

The following chart displays the old and the new output:

Both bars are based on the same monetary settings
Left: old planning approach
right: new costOptimized appoach - looks more expensive if you don't know the whole story

What you can't see here is another "invisible" cost factor:
Each unscheduled order contributes with some value hidden under the roof.

I added some virtual "cost per unscheduled order" to the chart (e.g. 200) and with these additional costs you can easily recognize that the new approach returns an improved cost output.

The dark blue contribution is smaller for the new approach. This is because the new solution manages to schedule 3 previously unscheduled orders which overcompensates the effect

I am quite optimistic that the costs per unscheduled order will be available per API in a future version. So far we simply apply a very high value.

Bernd