Delivery Driver Routing And Scheduling: The Easy Way
Below we discuss
Routing and scheduling are related but different and separate processes within delivery operations, last-mile delivery, and supply chain management. While closely related, they serve different purposes.
Routing
Delivery routing focuses on determining the most efficient route for a vehicle to travel in order to reach multiple destinations or delivery points. This involves finding the optimal route between several locations. Companies use route optimisation software that employ advanced algorithms to resolve complex vehicle routing problems that would be too challenging and time consuming for humans. In calculating the most efficient routes, these algorithms consider many variables including delivery locations, traffic flows and direction, along with time of day, road conditions, delivery windows, and vehicle capacity. When optimising for factors such as distance, time and fuel consumption, and operating hours, it is ultimately aiming to minimise travel time, fuel consumption, and operational costs, or a combination of these in varying degrees.
Scheduling
Delivery scheduling is the process of organising delivery timetables, to ensure that deliveries are made on time. It considers factors such as driver availability/skills, vehicle availability/type/capacity, customer locations, and customer preferences. Effective route scheduling software will take into consideration customer requirements for specific times when a delivery can take place. Integrated approaches to scheduling also check with routing software for the actual route availability and consider logistics variables such as drive time, direction, service time, vehicle capacity, available drivers’ hours.
By combining scheduling and routing software, companies are able to create better delivery plans, with a higher route density, and give clients a selection of the delivery slots available at the time of purchase.
Advantages of combining routing and scheduling
In Descartes' integrated platform, routing and scheduling are generally considered as a single process. Every time a new order is received, the delivery route scheduling software recalculates the delivery timetable and possible routes using an AI route optimisation engine. This ongoing tweaking and tuning with each and every order helps avoid over utilisation and guarantees that driver and vehicle capacity is known in real-time. Continuous optimisation of delivery schedules avoid lengthy batch processing towards the end of the day and usually enables companies to be able to offer later cut-off times for orders requested for next day delivery.
Traditional route planning vs. route optimisation algorithms
Traditional route planning
Many businesses have moved away from traditional route planning, which would involve local experts creating routes manually using their local knowledge or Google maps and Excel spreadsheets. This approach is time-consuming and inefficient, leading to scheduling problems and an inability to adapt to any issues. These routes rely on subjective assessments, which may not identify the optimal solution, impacting estimated arrival times (ETAs), driving time, fuel costs, and overall profitability. Manual route planning also quickly reaches its limits as the number of orders and vehicles increases, especially with added complexities like warehouse opening hours and customer delivery windows. Moving from "manual route construction’ to ‘exception management" using routing software like Descartes can reduce route planning time by hours.
Modern, route optimisation algorithms
Route optimisation software, in contrast, benefits from sophisticated mathematical models and algorithms, coupled with accurate and recent historic traffic data to dynamically adjust routes for maximum route density i.e. generating routes with the maximum number of stops close together and therefore efficient.
These algorithms consider a multitude of factors, including;
- Time of day
- Traffic flow
- Direction of travel
- Season of the year
- Length of time required for each stop
- Allocation of deliveries based upon the type of vehicle or person's skill
- Type of vehicle
- Restrictions such as emission zones or low bridges.
Descartes' route optimisation engine possesses the processing power to handle millions of calculations per minute, enabling continuous route optimisation for fleets of various sizes and across multiple depots. The latest solutions employ AI and machine learning to further improve planning, learning from past deliveries to make future plans even more accurate.
This continuous optimisation provides better results than batch optimisation at the end of the day. It also permits adaptation of planned routes as new orders are taken, resulting in truly dynamic scheduling. Furthermore, Descartes optimisation software can consider vehicle-specific constraints such as weight, number of items and volume, as well as environmental factors like CO2 Emissions, to facilitate selection of the most suitable vehicles for entry into Clean Air Zones.
The shift to computer generated route optimisation is driven by the significant impact on efficiency and cost savings. Descartes' customers have reported savings between 5% and 15% of fleet operations through the use of delivery route scheduling software and up to 75% in time savings, when moving from manual to software optimised delivery route scheduling. These savings are realised through reduced planning time, shorter distances driven per stop, resulting in lower fuel and vehicle maintenance costs, and increased productivity. Higher delivery density achieved through optimisation also means that additional drivers might not be needed to meet an increased demand, which is crucial, given current HGV driver shortages.
Apps for routing and scheduling deliveries
The market offers a wide array of software options to assist with routing and scheduling deliveries. Here’s a breakdown of just a few:
1. Google Maps and other free mapping tools
Google Maps is a well-known navigation program with simple route planning features. It is very helpful for startups with few routes or lone vehicles, and it can be a good choice for route planning with few stops. However, it lacks the sophisticated functionality needed to plan delivery and commercial logistics operations, and it can become time-consuming for complicated multi-stop routes and fleets of more than two or three vehicles.
For basic A-to-B navigation, similar free applications like Google maps, Waze, Apple Maps, Bing Maps or Mapquest are great, but they also perform poorly when creating routes with many vehicles and stops. There is frequently a cap on the maximum number of stops that may be calculated per journey, and none of these free solutions can recommend the optimal delivery order.
2. Scheduling software
Organising delivery windows, driver schedules and client preferences to guarantee a seamless scheduling procedure is the speciality of basic scheduling software. Similar to appointment booking software, this kind of software makes it possible to schedule delivery or service visit times. It does not, however, automatically create the most effective paths.
3. Route planning software
Software for route planning and optimisation uses algorithms to optimise routes while taking historical traffic patterns and vehicle capacity into account. To dispatch routes and make real-time adjustments, these platforms frequently come with a mobile driver app. In addition to frequently offering useful delivery management tools like customer notifications, real-time tracking, and proof of delivery, they strive to offer the optimal route in the shortest period of time. Solutions are made to make complicated route management for delivery fleets more efficient, economical, and customer focused. Descartes' route planning software is renowned for its sophisticated features, which include the ability to continuously optimise, take into account the most recent map data, and employ machine learning and sophisticated algorithms to achieve better results.
4. Fleet management software
Fleet management software may feature route optimisation functionality, but it focuses on more than just delivery route management, providing tools for monitoring and managing a complete fleet via vehicle telematics devices. These solutions might include maintenance tracking, driver performance analysis, transportation cost management, and vehicle diagnostics.
Read: Optimising Fleet Management
Best practices for hassle-free routing and scheduling
Choosing and implementing an efficient routing and scheduling solution requires careful planning:
- Set clear objectives: Establish clear objectives, such as cutting expenses, speeding up delivery or planning, or just increasing client happiness with your delivery service. Create quantifiable measures to monitor your success.
- Real-time adjustments: Embrace the dynamic nature of logistics by enabling real-time modifications to routes and schedules to address unexpected issues like traffic congestion or road closures. Descartes' software facilitates this by tracking vehicle locations against planned routes, aiding rerouting and proactive communication with customers about potential delays through a delivery order notification app.
- Balance efficiency and customer experience: Aim to strike a balance between meeting customer delivery expectations and using cost-effective routes. Customer satisfaction will be improved by offering precise ETAs within constrained delivery windows or by letting clients choose their preferred delivery window from a range of possibilities.
- Minimise environmental impact: Utilise sophisticated route optimisation to incorporate sustainable route planning and decarbonise your fleet operations, aligning with environmental goals. Descartes' software can optimise for the shortest most efficient routes, leading to fewer miles per delivery and reduced CO2 emissions. It can also select the vehicle with the lowest emissions for deliveries into Clean Air Zones.
Calculate Your Potential CO2 and Fuel Savings
- Start with quality data: Make sure that every order includes the correct details, such as the product's weight, dimensions, stacking guidelines, working hours, delivery address, and any special handling needs. Customer service and fleet efficiency will suffer from inaccurate timetables, missing deliveries, and underutilised vehicles caused by faulty data.
- Use technology: Route optimisation tools and delivery management software will improve and automate the planning process. Descartes' software utilises AI and machine learning to learn and adapt over time, leading to continuous improvements in delivery routes. Learn more about AI in delivery route planning
- Monitor and analyse performance: To help guide future planning, compare actual delivery performance to the plan and get driver input on difficulties and possible route enhancements. Descartes' software provides plan versus actual data displayed either graphically or in performance reports.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How does delivery route scheduling work?
It uses algorithms to analyse factors like delivery locations, traffic, and vehicle capacities to calculate efficient routes based on various criteria. - What are the benefits of using delivery route scheduling software?
- Benefits include improved efficiency, reduced costs, enhanced customer satisfaction, and increased driver productivity. Automation saves significant planning time.
- What are the most important elements of creating a delivery route schedule?
Quality data associated with the order (address, operating hours, restrictions), product data (dimensions, weight, handling), and vehicle data (size, capacity, emissions) are crucial.
Understand Best Practices of Geocoding for Deliveries
- What are the benefits of scheduling delivery routes for your fleet?
- Increased delivery density, better vehicle and driver utilisation, reliable on-time deliveries, improved customer satisfaction, no over or under-utilisation of vehicles, reduced missed deliveries and lower CO2 emissions are key benefits resulting in reduced operational costs.
- What cost savings can be expected?
Existing Descartes customers report savings of 15% in fleet operations due to reduced mileage, fuel, and maintenance costs, as well as increased productivity.
- Is Google Maps a viable solution?
While suitable for very small operations with few vehicles and known delivery order, Google Maps lacks the advanced optimisation features needed for commercial fleets with multiple delivery drops and constraints. - What is Route Optimisation?
- It's the automated routing of vehicles based on optimal routes for multiple deliveries/pick-ups, vehicle type, and depots, ensuring full fleet utilisation. It uses algorithms, sometimes AI and machine learning, to find the most effective route plans quickly.
- Discover more about route optimisation
- What is the Difference Between Batch and Continuous Optimisation?
- Batch optimisation occurs at the end of a period, creating a cutoff for new orders, while continuous optimisation happens with each new order taken, providing real-time data and capacity updates. Continuous optimisation can avoid over capacity issues and dissatisfied customers.
- Discover more about the differences between batch and continuous optimisation.
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