This screen will automatically calculate the most efficient Routes for a group of Transport Items and Consignments.

Route Planning is an additional module which allows you to use the AI route planner to automatically generate a route plan and optimise it for the efficient delivery of the consignments on your vehicles.

This takes into account

depot and vehicle setup
driving rules and restrictions
delivery point rules for special handling
delivery times

1 Overview
2 Initial Setup
3 Prior to Planning
4 Route Planning
- 4.1 Explanation of the Form
  - 4.1.1 Footer Options
  - 4.1.2 Search Criteria
  - 4.1.3 Transport Items
  - 4.1.4 Consignments
  - 4.1.5 Parameters
5 How to use
- 5.1 Next Step
  - 5.1.1 ACCEPT PLAN
- 5.2 Alternatives

Overview

There is a overview of the process in the YouTube link below

Initial Setup

Prior to use there are many areas of the system which need to be setup and configured

Depot Setup
Carrier and Carrier Driver Setup

Prior to Planning

You will also need to know how to use the

Held Consignments
GeoLocation Use

Route Planning

Explanation of the Form

Footer Options

Option	Use / Description

Option	Use / Description
Reset Layout	If you want to reset your layout back to the original then use this option you can then re-edit and save again. Once pushed there is no return to the previous option.
Save Layout	You can add additional fields to the results within the transport items and consignments, you choose these using the column chooser and once selected and added you can then save this layout for the next time.
Save for Later	This will save the route planning screen with the settings you have currently, so the vehicles and the consignments are left on their respective sides waiting for you to reopen the next time. It allows you to have a “look” during the day to see what you potentially may need in terms of vehicles. It is like running a pre-planning option but not committing it using the ACCEPT plan option
View Plan	This button will open a map screen showing the locations and routes that have been generated based on the criteria chosen above, allowing the data to be seen in a visual form This could take considerable time based on the number of vehicles and consignments your asking the system to plan for you.
Accept Plan	Accept Plan button to accept the routing that has been generated for this plan when the View Plan button was clicked. This will generate the Manifests and allocate the deliveries to them. You can then edit those manually if you wish in the depot plan screen.
Close	Closes the screen

Search Criteria

Select the site your wanting to plan for and any additional criteria you wish to view and press the search to then display the items on the boxes beneath.

Transport Items

This part of the form shows all the available vehicles which can be used to plan your consignments onto.

Vehicles can have particular service requirements and if you use this you would record items such as

TWO - where a vehicle is equipped with 2 men and should a consignment also need this requirement then it would only be planned on a vehicle with the requirement
TAIL - where a vehicle is equipped with a tail lift and when route planning it would look at all consignments in need of this equipment and match it to the specific vehicle.

LEFT

This shows all available vehicles which are allowed to be used at the depot.

It shows the type and special requirements which may be required for specific consignments.

RIGHT

This shows all the vehicles you will be asking the system to use during its calculation of the routes

Any vehicles you have already in the load plan if selected here will be allocated a further load.

To move an items from the left window to the right or vice versa, select the line then push the > button or the < buttons depending on whether you want to move it right of left. The >> and << buttons move everything from one window to the other

Consignments

These are all the unplanned consignments you have in the system already.

A consignment can be viewed by double-clicking anywhere on that Consignment in either the left or right lists

LEFT

This shows all available vehicles which are allowed to be used at the depot.

It shows the type and special requirements which may be required for specific consignments.

RIGHT

This shows all the vehicles you will be asking the system to use during its calculation of the routes

To move an items from the left window to the right or vice versa, select the line then push the > button or the < buttons depending on whether you want to move it right of left. The >> and << buttons move everything from one window to the other

Parameters

The Parameters in this section can be used to override the standard configuration options set-up against the depot.

When all Parameter fields are left as Standard, all values will be considered with equal weighting.

How to use

Ensure you have selected the vehicles, the consignments and the parameters before taking the next step.

A summary of what you have chosen is shown on the top of the form, an example of which is displayed below, obviously if your consignments exceed your transport items you are going to get results where items can not be delivered.

The delivery planning process will take all of the information you have provided and plan routes accordingly and it will try to optimise those routes.

This could result in routes where drivers potentially go to addresses next door to each other but these are usually a result of delivery windows and maximum planned load weights for the vehicles being taken into account, if you are not happy with anything then you can adjust the parameters and try again or you can accept the plan and then adjust it manually.

Next Step

Press the VIEW PLAN button, the system will open the route planning map

In the example below the system planned some very extreme delivery locations

It confirms it has planed all 4 deliveries with the single vehicle start time from the depot is 03:32 with first delivery 09:11 and final one is 18:11 with a total of 338km

You can also zoom into the map to see it in more detail.

Clicking on a delivery marker will show you further details of the delivery point

If any deliveries are not able to be included those would appear in the unscheduled deliveries, always check this before closing the form.

ACCEPT PLAN

If you want to go ahead and save these routes you should close the window and then press the ACCEPT PLAN button, if not you can jiggle things around and then try again.

Alternatives

As part of the workflow to produce the images above we also tried the same deliveries on 2 vehicles which provided a different way of performing the deliveries and this time all were delivered

You can see there are multiple plans for 2 vehicles which are both easy to distinguish on the map.