SmartZone Routing

You have hundreds of thousands of customer addresses in your database. How can you quickly create optimal routes from such a huge list?

The best way to start? Split your giant database into smaller territories.

And yet solution that creates a whole new set of problems:

If a territory has too many stops, it’s impossible to provide the best service.

Even with the right number of stops, if a territory is too large, it’s still impossible to provide the best service.

On the other hand, if you have too few stops in a territory or too many territories, you waste drivers, vehicles and time. And that means wasted money.

Given a huge database of addresses, how do you answer these questions?

• What’s the best number of territories?
• What’s the best number of addresses per territory?
• Which addresses should belong to which territory?
• What’s the best use of my drivers, vehicles, and territories?

SOLUTION: SmartZones Optimization

Route4Me’s Smart Zones Optimization algorithm analyzes your database and splits your addresses into small zones (virtual territories) of addresses.

Once you’ve got your zones, use Route4Me to create optimized routes with the addresses in each zone.

You’ll save massive amounts of time you’d normally waste. And you’ll be confident that every route you create with Route4Me is as good as it can get.

How SmartZone Optimizations works:

1. Split the database into territories

The user can choose to either:

• automatically split the address list into an optimal number of territories or
• manually specify the number of territories

2. Split each territory into routes

The user can choose to

• Plan a single route for all addresses within a territory
• Use the Multiple Drivers Route Optimization to automatically plan the optimal number of routes within each territory
• Manually specify the number of vehicles & /routes per territory

3. Apply constraints within each territory

When you calculate routes, you can include route limitations such as:

• Max Weight
• Max Pieces
• Max Revenue
• Max Cube
• Time Windows

...and many more

Example 1:

Scenario: You have 1000 customers across the region and have 5 sales reps available to service all the customers. You want to meet as many customers as possible in the most cost- and time-efficient way.

Problem: How do you decide which salesman should visit which customers? How do you make sure your salesmen don’t waste time just traveling from one site to another?

Solution: Ask Smart Zones Optimization to calculate the optimal split of 5 territories. It will calculate how to balance the number of stops with the distance and travel time constraints. Once it’s grouped your addresses into 5 optimal territories, you can use Route4Me to plan routes within each territory.

Example 2:

Scenario: You have 20 trucks and 500 customer deliveries daily. Ideally, each driver will make 25 stops a day.

Problem: How do you determine the best combination of 25 addresses for each of your 20 trucks? You want to equally distribute the workload among all 20 drivers.

Solution: Tell Route4Me’s SmartZone Optimization that you want 25 addresses per territory. It will calculate the optimal way to split all 500 addresses into 20 zones, each with 25 addresses. Moreover, it will make sure that the travel distance and travel time is as equal as possible for all 20 zones.