Bulk Plan Cost Based Routing

To turn on cost-based routing, set the parameter ORDER ROUTING METHOD to Cost-based Routing.

Each order release bundle is evaluated against all applicable itineraries and the route based on the cheapest itinerary is determined. For a pool-crossdock itinerary, multi-stop consolidation is checked. If it is not a pool-crossdock itinerary, multi-leg consolidation is checked. Once the route is established, the different leg components of the bundles are built into shipments and then consolidated with other order bundles. The figure below shows the logic flow at a high level.

Order Bundling

The first step in the process is to bundle the order releases/order movements. Order bundling combines orders that have the same source, same destination, overlapping time windows, and several other matching criteria. Order bundling is described in greater detail in Bulk Plan Tuning Order Bundling Logic.

Itinerary Matching

Once the order releases/order movements are bundled, they are matched against itineraries. An order bundle can match to more than one itinerary. Once the order bundles are matched to itineraries, the itineraries are ranked and the order bundles matched to each itinerary are processed in the order of ranking. The itineraries are ranked according to the following criteria:

• Multi-stop or consolidation itineraries are considered before multi-leg itineraries. A single-leg itinerary with the consolidation option turned off is considered to be a multi-leg itinerary.
• The number of orders or total weight of orders matched. For each itinerary, if the parameter CHOOSE ITINERARY BY NUM OF ORDERS is set to TRUE, the total number of order releases that matched is used to rank the itineraries. If the parameter is set to FALSE then the total weight of orders is used in ranking the itineraries.

Multi-stop Consolidation

For pool-crossdock itineraries, the bulk plan logic selects all the order bundles that match to the pool-crossdock itinerary and have not yet been planned. Direct shipments are built first for each order bundle. These order bundles are then built into shipments going through pools, cross-docks and/or multi-stops.

The following parameters control the building of shipments through pools and cross-docks. These parameters are used mainly for fine tuning the routing decisions through a network of pools and cross-docks that are setup on itinerary and itinerary legs.

• PREFER XDOCK SHIPMENTS THAN DIRECT SHIPMENTS: Use this parameter to possibly route orders through cross-docks rather than direct.
• OPTIMIZE POOL BY NUM OF ORDERS
• BUILD DIRECT SHIPMENT OPTION FOR BULK PLAN
• PLAN THRU POOL BEFORE XDOCK
• PERFORM POOL SWAPPING
• MIN INBOUND UNLOAD TIME AT XDOCK   
• MULTISTOP FAVOR SAME DOWNSTREAM SHIPMENT (logic configuration parameter for MULTISTOP)
• MULTISTOP POOL LINEHAUL SHIPMENT WITH DIRECT
• MULTISTOP POOL LINEHAUL WITH DIRECT ALL AT ONCE
• MULTISTOP XDOCK INBOUND SHIPMENT WITH DIRECT
• MULTISTOP XDOCK INBOUND AFTER OUTBOUND COMPLETE
• SEGMENT MULTISTOP SHIPMENTS BY POOLS
• PERFORM COST BASED POOL/ XDOCK SELECTION: The cost based pool and cross-dock selection algorithm performs a cost based optimization of pools and cross-docks using a logistics guide. Note use the network routing instead of this option.
• USE DYNAMIC POOL SELECTION: If the USE DYNAMIC POOL SELECTION parameter is set to true, the dynamic pooling algorithm is used with the following parameters available for further tuning of the dynamic pooling algorithm.
• • DYNPOL DIRECT ENCOURAGEMENT FACTOR
  • DYNPOL DIRECT PRORATING FACTOR
  • DYNPOL DISTANCE MODE
  • DYNPOL MAX CAPACITY VOLUME
  • DYNPOL MAX CAPACITY WEIGHT
  • DYNPOL MAX POOL CAPACITY VOLUME
  • DYNPOL MAX POOL CAPACITY WEIGHT
  • DYNPOL MULTISTOP LINEHAULS TO POOL
  • DYNPOL PERFORM MULTIPOOL OPTIMIZATION
  • DYNPOL POOL PRORATING FACTOR
  • DYNPOL SKIP MULTISTOPS DIRECT STEP

There are several tuning parameters that control how the multi-stop shipments are formed. They are described in Bulk Plan Tuning Multi-stop Shipment Logic in greater detail.

Multi-leg Consolidation

Multi-leg consolidation involves:

• Building direct shipments for all orders bundles matched on various itineraries
• Consolidating shipments on different legs of the itinerary
• Building multi-stop shipments on the first and last legs of the itineraries

Limitations

While cost based routing allows you to model several routing scenarios, there are certain limitations of using this approach. The limitations are:

• On each itinerary, you can specify only one cross-dock. This means that in the networks that contain more than one cross-dock, you must model multiple cross-docks using separate itineraries. However, modeling this way has the limitation that the cost comparison across cross-docks cannot be made.
• You can specify several consolidation pools and deconsolidation pools on an itinerary leg. However, an order release cannot be routed through more than one consolidation pool, deconsolidation pool. The order releases can be routed through a cross-dock and then to one of the available deconsolidation pools. However, they cannot be routed to a consolidation pool followed by a cross-dock or deconsolidation pool.
• The dynamic pooling algorithm works only with deconsolidation pools. It cannot be used with consolidation pools.