Trucks travel too many kilometres
Can the same deliveries be completed with a better route?
Why This Decision Matters
A vehicle routing algorithm optimizes the sequence of stops to minimize distance, travel time, or fleet size while satisfying all constraints like truck capacity and customer delivery windows.
The most intuitive manual approach is to send trucks to the nearest stops first (greedy heuristic). However, this nearest-neighbor approach often creates crossing routes at the end of the day or violates capacity limits, forcing trucks to make long, costly return trips to the depot. In practice, manual routing leads to 15% to 30% higher mileage compared to algorithmic scheduling.
Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), Operations Research mathematical optimization with explicit operational constraints.
Travelling Salesperson / Vehicle Routing Problem (TSP / VRP)
Cuts fleet mileage and diesel emissions by 20-35% compared to manual dispatcher route ordering.
Decisions that Govern Execution
#1Allocation: Which customer orders should be assigned to which truck?
#2Sequencing: What is the exact sequence of stops for each route?
#3Timing: At what time should each vehicle arrive and depart from each stop?
Execution Sequence for Operators
Map customer locations and calculate real travel times between every pair using a distance matrix service.
Extract historical GPS routes and order logs to calculate current capacity utilization baseline.
Implement a vehicle routing formulation (like Clarke-Wright savings or local search using Google OR-Tools).
Integrate customer delivery time windows and shift limits as hard constraints.
Deliver draft routes to dispatchers as recommendations, allowing manual override capabilities for localized road knowledge.
Feed execution data back into the algorithm to refine average service/unload time constants.
Required Telemetry Feeds
| Field | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Coordinates | Geographical Lat/Long | Determines physical distances and travel times. |
| Order Weights/Volume | kg / cubic meters | Ensures vehicle capacity limits are not broken. |
| Delivery Windows | Time Ranges (e.g. 09:00 - 12:00) | Enforces delivery arrival time constraints. |
| Vehicle Capacity Profiles | Max Weight / Volume limits | Used by packing solver to restrict load assignments. |
Diagnostic Scoreboard & Formulas
| Metric | Mathematical Formula | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Fleet Capacity Utilization | Total Weight Loaded / Total Capacity of Active Fleet | Measures how close the vehicles are to weight/volume limits. |
| Routing Factor | Actual Route Distance / Straight Line Distance | Measures the routing path deviation overhead. |
| On-Time-In-Full (OTIF) | Deliveries within Time Windows / Total Deliveries | Tracks schedule window compliance rate. |
Foundational Literature
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