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Simplified vehicle routing model configuration using custom templates

Posted 10 Jan 2023

Our ODL Live vehicle route optimiser engine supports many different constraints, costs and rules which can be configured to solve different sorts of routing problems - e.g. parcel deliveries, scheduling mobile technicians, planning patient transportation, periodic problems etc.

So far, so good… except this leads to another problem, which we haven’t always succeeding in solving as well as I’d like. As we add more options to the engine, it becomes harder for clients to navigate the API, find the rules they need and structure their data accordingly





So how do we make our API simpler to use, whilst keeping it fully-featured?

We’ve recently added a ‘templates feature’, which lets clients pass data to ODL Live in a easy Excel format that’s tailored to their individual routing problem, containing only the fields they need and named according to their own terminology. We configure the template for the client, and the template converts the client’s own data in an Excel/CSV or flat JSON format to the hierarchical JSON data structures used by ODL Live.

Each client gets their own template based on their requirements. Their template contains all the rules needed for their routing problem (e.g. lateness penalties, clustering parameters, customised job types), hidden neatly away. We expose to the client only the few key fields and parameters they need to know and care about (and give sane defaults to the hidden parameters they don’t need to know). Combined with the route plans Ex

📌 January 10, 2023 - Simplified vehicle routing model configuration using custom templates (Bathinda)
🏢 OPEN DOOR LOGISTICS
📍 Bathinda