How do I optimize routes using continuous improvement?

The ‘continuous improvement’ routing plan option optimizes resource routes continuously when new activities are added to the bucket, there’s a new ability to assign activities to existing routes, or an existing activity is in jeopardy. You can use the Continuous improvement option instead of schedule-based routing runs, to get a new level of 'just here, just now' optimization.

Note: Re-optimization starts only if routing can assign more activities or optimize the route further in some way. Further, you can’t have more than one continuous improvement plan per routing profile at any given moment. It isn't a best practice to have other types of routing runs (except Immediate Routing for Urgent activities) simultaneously while continuous improvement routing is planned.

For continuous improvement routing runs, the values for interval between runs in minutes, total runtime, and SLR time distribution are defined automatically. Further, other options such as Dynamic Routing and Try to schedule activities to service window start are also not available.

While continuous improvement runs support optimization, you can’t choose the criteria for when the run must be started, and there are no acceptance criteria - the results are always accepted.

Continuous improvement routing runs may fix the excessive overtime assignments if the overtime is limited or prohibited in the routing plan settings. To support this, the activities in overtime are shown as in jeopardy and have a corresponding warning all over the application, not just while moving the activity.

Note: When continuously routing activities for overnight work, it's recommended to limit overtime to six hours or less to ensure activities are assigned to the expected date and shift. Excessive overtime might result in activities being allocated to mobile workers for the previous day.

Continuous improvement routing provides faster and more efficient activity assignment similar to an Immediate routing plan, while providing the optimization level of a Bulk routing plan. If an activity is in jeopardy, the continuous improvement plan may automatically reschedule it and return it to normal operation. If you move an activity manually during a long Bulk routing run, a continuous improvement routing plan may automatically resolve the conflicts in the merging operation.

How does continuous improvement routing work?

The continuous improvement routing run starts as soon as the running conditions are satisfied for the bucket. That is, when new activities are added to the bucket, or activities that are on the route are canceled, or activities are in jeopardy. If routing can't improve the situation from the very first time, then no new attempts are made until more activities are added, canceled, or are in jeopardy.

If there are Immediate routing runs scheduled at the same time with continuous improvement (although it isn't recommended), Immediate runs run first and then the continuous improvement runs are triggered. Other bulk routing plan types such as manual, recurrent, once a day don't pause continuous improvement plans from the start until it finishes. However, continuous improvement plans may be started to route activities that came after the bulk routing plan started.

Use Case

Let's say a company works with fitness equipment. Many activities for today are created from an ERP application at about 06:00, while technicians start their work typically at 07:00. Intraday activities are created at the rate of about 20 per hour from 07:00 to 16:00 and must be assigned immediately such that it optimizes travel, due to high gas prices. A very small number of urgent activities must be routed immediately with no optimization, as the only criterion is the time to complete. All the activities left in the bucket or on routes at 18:00 must be moved to the next day.

In this case, the recommended routing plans are:

Morning Routine: Once a Day routing plan at 06:05 to route all the activities to all technicians.
Urgent Routing: Immediate routing plan for Urgent activities from 07:00 to 16:30.
Intraday Routing: Continuous improvement routing plan from 07:00 to 16:30, with a filter that doesn't reorder Urgent activities and with the 'Minimize Total Travel' goal selected.
Evening Routine: Once a Day multiday routing plan (2 days from today) at 17:00 to route activities from today to tomorrow.
Manual Routing: A special routing plan to re-route activities manually, if needed.

Known Limitations

Dynamic Routing, Try to schedule activities to service window start, and Use resource outside of routing bucket options aren't available.