Route optimization for multiple routes — also known as Vehicle Route Planning (VRP) — helps you generate the most efficient routes across multiple vehicles in a single plan.
Instead of planning each vehicle's route individually, VRP lets you assign a pool of jobs to a fleet of vehicles at once, with the system determining the optimal distribution and sequence automatically. Each VRP plan can consist of multiple routes, with each route assigned to one vehicle.
There are 3 steps involved in performing VRP routing.
Note: Maximum of 300 jobs per plan.
Steps
Create jobs in your Detrack account.
There are 2 ways to select the jobs for route planning.
Jobs table
Select the jobs that require planning.
Click Actions > Plan multiple route.
Map View
Navigate to Map.
Click the Select Mode.
Select the date of the jobs for the jobs to appear in the map.
Click to use any of the selector tools to select the required jobs for planning.
The map marker of the selected jobs will have its color changed.
Click on Actions > Plan multiple routes.
A form with the various route parameters will appear
Settings for drivers/vehicles
Select the Vehicle Mode => Car / Motorcycle / Truck / Heavy Truck. => The vehicles corresponding to the selected Vehicle Mode will be available for selection.
Select drivers
Check the vehicles that are to be utilized for this plan.
Retain driver assignment => If enabled, the systems will forcibly try to plan the jobs to the respective assigned vehicles. (Optional).
Define Route Preferences
Provide a Route group name => Identifier for this VRP plan.
The generated Run Name of the routes would be appended with a Route Start Number suffix.
Default: 1.
Assuming that the Route group name is “AM-Run”, the generated output will be “AM-1”, “AM-2”, etc.
Select a Start Depot => Start location/s of the vehicle/s.
Select an End Depot => End location/s of the vehicle/s. (Optional).
Select the Route Time Window
Use vehicle’s working hours => Take reference from the information of the various vehicles from Settings > Vehicles.
Provide a time window => Override the information of the various vehicles from Settings > Vehicles.
Show more advanced settings (Optional)
Provide a Service Time => Amount of time spend at each job location. Providing a value in this field will overwrite the jobs’ Service Time value for planning. Will affect the generated ETA Time of the jobs.
Traffic (Optional) => Introduce a buffer to slow down the speed of the vehicle on certain roads. Default: Assumes no traffic.
Avoid Toll => Routes would likely traverse a longer distance and take longer time to avoid tolls / gantries. Default: No.
Route Start Number => Suffix for the Route Name to begin with. Default: 1. The generated Run Name will be {Route group name}-{Route Start Number}. Assuming that the Route group name is “AM-Run”, the generated output will be AM-1, AM-2, etc.
Max Speed (Optional) => Maximum traveling speed of the vehicle. Note:
Navigate to Settings > Organization > General > Unit of distance to toggle between the change of units (km/h vs MPH).
Providing a value will cause the systems to utilize certain roads for routing.
Default: 140km/h for cars and 90km/h for trucks.
Click Proceed to Optimize Route when done.
A pop-up will appear at the bottom right hand side of the dashboard.
Note: This process will run asynchronously in the background.
Upon completion of the planning, another pop-up will appear.
You may navigate to view the planned routes by clicking on either the View Route Table or View Route On Map button to review the various routes.
You can subsequently assign the route to the drivers or click on Edit route to resequence or re-optimize the route