Fleet Configuration
When evaluating an existing distribution environment, either at a warehouse or factory, it is often necessary to answer the question: What is the best fleet for this set of deliveries? Usually the workload will vary a lot between days of the week, time of the month and time of the year, so no single fleet is optimal for the whole year. The methodology we use is to model the best fleet for each day in a reasonable period of time, from one to three months. Using these fleet configurations for each day we can recommend a fleet to cover say 85% of all days, allowing for the possibility of hiring external vehicles to cover the peak periods.
To model the fleet for each day, we enter all the deliveries for the period, geocode all the customers, specify working hours, delivery windows, vehicle exclusions, and other real world restrictions, and specify the vehicle types that can be used. Then, using FLO, we run routing schedules for each day that minimize the costs and optimize the fleet for the day.
