Locations

Locations play a crucial role in efficient route planning, directly impacting travel efficiency and resource utilization. They represent geographical points, encompassing a variety of destinations.

• Places where orders are picked up or delivered. This can either be order-specific or a depot site.
• Points where a vehicle’s route starts or ends.

A location's attributes are divided into geographical features and stop-related characteristics.

Geographical properties

The geographical properties of a location consist of latitude and longitude, which represent the geographical coordinates used to specify a position on the Earth’s surface. If the matchSideOfStreet property of a location is set, it requires all vehicles to approach this location from the side of the street where the location is situated. This prevents the driver from needing to cross the street.

Stop properties

A stop is a scheduled visit of a location for the purpose of picking up or delivering an order. The start and end of a route are not considered to be a stop. The stop properties describe the requirements to schedule a stop at a location.

• Preparation duration — The amount of time required to complete necessary preparations upon arrival at the location. This duration resembles various activities that need to happen before tasks can be executed, such as parking, administrative tasks or any other essential tasks associated with the location visit.
• Time slots — A location establishes time slots, determining when tasks can be scheduled for execution. The time slots restrict when the optimization can schedule an appointment to pick up or deliver an order. An appointment is a consecutive sequence of tasks that have been assigned the same time slot. The appointment should adhere to timing restrictions. The preparation duration, specified by the time slot, is considered part of the appointment and will be scheduled before the tasks. The time slot can also specify the maximum number of appointments to which it can be assigned. Further restrictions on the available time slots may be imposed by orders and depots.

• Stop concurrency — The facilities at a location may impose constraints on the number of stops that can be executed concurrently, such as the availability of docks, the maximum throughput of packages or the number of charging points for electric vehicles. By defining stop concurrency at a location, the optimization process can account for these limitations. Stops will be assigned not only to a vehicle but also to a specific vehicle slot at the location. Concurrent stops must occupy distinct vehicle slots, thereby the available vehicle slots reduce the number of concurrent stops. A vehicle slot is occupied from the start of the first appointment of the stop to the end of the last. Additionally, a minimum buffer duration can be specified, which dictates the required time gap between when a slot is vacated by one stop and occupied by another. Without a minimum buffer duration, stops whose first appointment starts at the same time as its last appointments ends do not need to be assigned to a vehicle slot. The slot is not occupied during stop preparation, as this typically involves preliminary tasks. Each vehicle slot incurs cost when it is assigned at least one stop. You can specify a list of predefined vehicle slots, each with its own cost. If all predefined slots are occupied and a stop needs to be assigned, extra slots will be used, incurring a violation cost per extra slot.

  

Example

We need to deliver goods at a grocery store. We can deliver the goods at any time during the day. Upon arrival at the store, we first have to fill in some paper work, which takes us 5 minutes. After that, we park our truck at the dock and can start unloading our truck. There is only a single dock at the store that does not incur a cost if used. After we have left, it takes one hour to empty the dock. However, another truck already arrives and needs to be unloaded at a temporary location requiring extra personnel that needs to be paid 100.

"stopProperties": { 
	"preparationDuration": 300, 
	"timeSlots": [
		{      
			"id": "OPENING_HOURS",
			"earliestStart": "2025-01-01T08:00:00+00:00",
			"latestEnd": "2025-01-01T20:00:00+00:00"    
		}
	],
	"concurrency": {
		"vehicleSlots": [
			{
				"cost": 0
			}
		],
		"violationCostPerExtraSlot": 100,
		"minimumBufferDuration": 3600
	}
}

Categories

Certain constraints and rules are not only specific to the location but entail different entities such as vehicles or other locations. These are typically expressed based on categories, which are often functional properties of the location itself. Examples of categories might be whether or not large trucks can easily park, the geographical region a location is situated or any other essential property associated with the vehicle.