Distribution Allocation & Routing Approach For City Deliveries/Pick-Ups

Challenge: How to review delivery operations with multiple trips to minimize vehicles used

Data needed: time trends of pickup/delivery volumes (weight, if truck weigh out instead of cube out).

Step 1: Applying http://www.compareroute.appspot.com/ to find the shortest distance to route all the points for each trip. Base on the route sequence, maximize load before using another vehicle to come up with new routes with possibility lower number of vehicles.

Step 2: Repeat stage one, but do it for consolidated volumes (sum up volume from multiple trips to the same point in a day) from to try and achieve one collection at each collection point in a day (consolidate for the day before). This will try to reduce collection to once a dayrather than 2 to 3 collections daily. Only when vehicle capacity, time, or next process is a bottleneck then we allow more vehicles for 2^nd/3^rd collections.

Step 3: We will probably have a good idea (by using pareto) of which route and collection points constraints the vehicle by capacity, or if time is the constraint. If capacity is a usually a constraint, we can try the low variability collection points collected by one vehicle, and high variability collected by another. If time is the constraint, we can have some vehicles to pick up and hub to max capacity and meet time constraints

Step 4: Run through the vehicle-route assignment from stage 1, 2 and 3 with the volume trends to suggest a responsive approach to review delivery operations with time


Let me know if you have a better idea to solve the same challenge