Below are six core concepts that underpin MinMile Plan solution vocabulary. They will also help you better understand the content provided in the later User Documentation articles.
-
Dynamic scheduling means that our schedules are being constantly recalculated and optimised to find the most efficient route for orders being placed. In essence:
-
Each new order, amendment, and cancellation triggers schedule recalculation.
-
The same for resource updates: changes in vehicles, shifts, speed profiles are taken into account immediately while regenerating schedules.
-
-
Real time and accurate GetSlot - available slots are calculated and retrieved within seconds, ensuring your customers see them instantly.
-
GetSlot considers already established trips, predicted on-the-road travel distance/duration, available shifts, remaining vehicle capacity, service time.
-
There is no significant separation between trips built for GetSlots and final trips.
-
-
Scheduling vs. routing - scheduling is responsible for placing orders into trips, while routing focuses on finding the shortest paths between customer locations.
-
Scheduling calculates which orders are best to go with which trips using routing as one of the inputs. It is done in Delivery Core as presented in architectural view.
-
Routing, aka mapping, calculates distance/duration between any given order. It is done in Satalia Routing Service as presented in architectural view.
-
The same scheduling and routing solutions are used for GetSlot and schedule finalisation phases.
-
-
Optimisation objective – the optimisation objective defines the KPIs that will be maximised while optimising the schedules/routes.
-
The optimisation objective is organised in hierarchy as follows: 1 - maximise scheduled orders; 2 - minimise trips used; 3 - minimise time, duration or distance.
-
There are slight differences in the objective while the schedules are being built vs. when it needs finalising. This allows them to offer more slots during the “draft” phase.
-
-
Various constraints and other rules - a set of rules, set up in Control Room or via Delivery APIs that optimisation will respect and take into account while producing final schedules. Key constraints include:
-
Vehicle & shift related: capacity start & end time, breaks, start & end custom locations, speed profiles.
-
Order priority.
-
Categorical matching of order to trips with flags.
-
Territory management.
-
-
Core API and Control Room UI
-
Core API is used for slot retrieval, order and schedule management integrated within the client ecosystem.
-
Control Room is a user interface to review scheduling outcomes and proceed with manual interventions, resource and process configuration.
-