Introduction to Optimisation
Why do you need an optimisation in the logistics section?
Every company aims for a profit maximisation or a cost minimisation. Particularly logistics costs play an important role in the cost structure of several companies. Also think of politico-economic decisions such as the introduction of the truck toll and increasing petrol prices that require cost savings.
For this reason it becomes more and more important to organise the fleet as efficient and cost-effective as possible. Using the optimisation function of OPTITOOL, you receive optimal trip solutions. OPTITOOL always optimises the sum of quality costs and transport costs. The lower the costs are, the more savings are possible. Generally, by using OPTITOOL, you can save costs up to 15%.
Human being versus OPTITOOL – which plans better?
Computer assisted optimised trips do not follow any patterns. However, the human being planning trips is normally influenced by accustomed spatial patterns and structures.
The following comparison of results of manual trip planning by human being and optimised trip planning by OPTITOOL clearly shows the human influence by spatial structures and patterns:
On the right figure you see a classic optimisation result with so-called “onion skin” trips, that means, smaller trips lying within larger trips. Furthermore, this example shows „twice a village“ trips. That means: Trips which lead twice in the same direction are not necessarily a bad thing. The left figure shows the trips planned by a human being. The manually planned trip is almost 100 kilometres longer than the optimised trips.
Usually the “human” planner does not consider those unaccustomed spatial patterns such as “onion skin” trips and “twice a village”-trips.
