PTV Logistics Product Forum

HI there,

we recently made some fance features for the market of

• Service technician planning
• Field force
• Sales force

where the special challenge is based on

• Technicians are planned over multiple days
• At the end of a day they could either spend the night
  • at home
  • at a customer (user chooses hotel afterwards near the customer)
  • at a given hotel (out of a list of candidates)
  Decision is made by the engine, based on costs per so-called layover.

For those who start to recognize the story: this new approach is supposed to replace xTour1 planOvernight. ANd we already overachieved the goal as you can also organize the overnight tours of a team in one go! #OptiflowRocks

The screenshots below show some examples of how a result could look like (to be extended!)
The mechanism in general is based on what we call "resources" - they have been invented in Optiflow Optimization in Version 1.24.0 (26.09.2025) and extended in the succeeding versions.

	Driver is available on 5 days a week (could be more of course) and therefore modelled via 5 vehicle objects. a single resource object is used to glue the daily vehicles together in a consecutive arrangement. Potential stay in a hotel costs 100 bucks. The engine decides to stay in Hotel on Monday and Wednesday evening. Friday is a roundtrip around the homebase.
	This time the hotel costs are very high. Therefore staying at home is cheaper 5 daily roundtrips.
	And hotel almost for free used all the time One huge week tour
	Works fine with multiple resources! I Placed them in the corners.
	And again: expensive layover Driver returns home every day
	Or accomodation for free Driver returns home at the end of his week