Network Routing and Carrier Capacity

You can enable network routing optimizer to take capacity usage availability into consideration to make a more accurate routing decision.

Configuring Carrier Capacity

The following fields are required to set up capacity limits:

• Capacity Group (typically Rate Offering)
• Equipment Type (a one-to-one with equipment group is recommended)
• Time Period (e.g., Daily, Day-of-Week, Weekly, Monthly, etc)
• Lane OR Capacity Limit Group

Note that this is the only set up for network routing logic to understand carrier capacity at the routing decision step. The concept of carrier capacity limit group is a group of capacity limit records. It represents the carrier capacity constraints that should apply to a leg or a group of legs, instead of having to define carrier capacity by lane.

The leg consolidation group has an optional capacity limit group. The leg consolidation group represents a group of legs, and some constraints that are shared across those legs. In this case, all the legs in the leg consolidation group will use the carrier capacity defined in the capacity limit group.

This is illustrated in the following somewhat more complicated example:
 

Note that direct is cheaper than cross-dock, but has capacity limits.

Direct Leg Consolidation Group:

• S1 to D
• S2 to D
• Uses "S-to-D" Capacity Limit Group

S-to-D Capacity Limit Group:

• Carrier A: 2 Trucks/Day
• Carrier B: 1 Truck/Day

Handle Carrier Capacity in Network Routing

The main challenge to expand network routing framework is to constrain the optimization problem to a manageable size. Thus, OTM provides two approaches:

1. Default Behavior: The property glog.optimization.networkrouting.useMultipleIterationSolve is set to true. This property controls whether to use multiple pass approach to solve the network routing with carrier capacity. Solve the problem multiple times and gradually expand the problem. The workflow can be seen in the following flow: OTM will make routing decisions without capacity constraints. Then expand selected routes. Then make routing decisions with capacity constraints. If necessary expand selected routes again until network is fully expanded or no new routes get selected.

By performing this multi-iteration algorithm, OTM can effectively control the size of the problem. However, the down-side is that the whole process is difficult to analyze.

2. Alternate behavior: The glog.optimization.networkrouting.useMultipleIterationSolve is set to false: OTM will expand all the feasible routes. The advantage of this approach is that it is easier to analyze. However, it could expand all the unnecessary routes and hence make the problem more difficult to solve than necessary.

Network Routing & Carrier Capacity Properties

The following glog.optimization properties impact network routing and carrier capacity.

• glog.optimization.networkrouting.maximalExpansionDaysForLegOption
• glog.optimization.networkrouting.maximalExpansionDaysForOrderRoute
• glog.optimization.networkrouting.maximalNumOfIterations
• glog.optimization.networkrouting.useMultipleIterationSolve