Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP)

Status: Closed Testing

This feature is currently in closed testing phase. Contact us if you're interested in participating.

What is the Vehicle Routing Problem?

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization problem that asks:

What is the optimal set of routes for a fleet of vehicles to traverse in order to deliver to a given set of customers?

The VRP generalizes the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) by considering multiple vehicles instead of a single route. Like the TSP, the VRP is NP-hard, making it computationally challenging. However, it has many practical applications in logistics, delivery services, waste collection, and transportation. The standard objective is to minimize total route cost, though other objectives like minimizing the number of vehicles used or total distance traveled are also common.

Variables

The VRP algorithm considers multiple planning variables to generate optimal schedules:

Resources:

• Availability
• Resource filters
• Location

Tasks:

• Time windows
• Resource filters
• Priority
• Location

How it works

The algorithm takes in the selected resources and tasks to plan, along with their metadata, and automatically generates a schedule. It evaluates all these variables, generates a score, and iteratively tries millions of times to improve that score, resulting in an optimized schedule that balances all constraints and objectives.

In the open tasks list, select the items that you want to automatically schedule. Right click to open the context menu, and call the "Run field service solver". This opens the following window:

Select a date range that the solver must plan in, as well as the resources that must be incorporated. To run the solver, click the "Start solver" button, which will run a task in the background to create the schedule.

Configuration

The VRP feature must be enabled in the preview features settings before use, and a solver API key must be provided to use the service.

License

These features are only accessible when the tenant has the advanced map optional extra activated.