Driver Skills And Vehicle Attributes With Mixed Fleet Route Optimization

Not all customers have the same delivery, pickup, or service requirements. Suppose you have a team of drivers with different skill sets and a fleet of vehicles with different attributes and capacities. Planning routes for hundreds of customers with different requirements creates billions of possible routing scenarios. Route4Me’s Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes feature allows you to optimize hundreds of thousands of addresses with different required skills and attributes in seconds. Route4Me automatically matches the Driver Skills of your field employees and the Vehicle Attributes of your fleet to each location’s required skills and attributes. You can ensure that people with the correct skills always visit the correct destinations.

Furthermore, pair Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes with Mixed Fleet Routing to solve even the most complex routing scenarios in seconds and maximize the capacity of your vehicles. NOTE: When Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes are enabled together with Mixed Fleet, both features can only be used together. When only Mixed Fleet or Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes is enabled, each feature can be used on its own.

Driver Skills With Vehicle Attributes And Mixed Fleet Route Optimization Overview

Follow these steps to optimize routes with Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes with Mixed Fleet Capacity Profiles. Learn more further in this guide.

1. Add custom Capacity Profiles to your Vehicles.
2. Add custom Vehicle Attributes to your Vehicles.
3. Add custom Driver Skills to your Drivers.
4. Add required Vehicle Attributes, Driver Skills, and Capacity (Pieces, Cube, Weight, Revenue, etc.) in your address spreadsheet.
5. Upload your spreadsheet and select the preferred Optimization Profile or adjust route settings manually.
6. Route4Me will match Vehicle Attributes and Driver Skills to those required at each imported address. Then, Route4Me will distribute destinations, optimize the best number of routes, dispatch routes, and assign the correct Drivers and Vehicles to the correct routes.

Additionally, learn more about Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes. NOTE: Mixed Fleet optimization automatically assigns Vehicles to Drivers. When Mixed Fleet routing is enabled alongside Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes, manually assigning Vehicles to Drivers will prevent automatically assigning optimal Vehicles to Drivers.

Mixed Fleet Route Optimization With Driver Skills And Vehicle Attributes

When planning Mixed Fleet routes with required Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes, Route4Me calculates each vehicle’s capacity to add as many addresses as possible and maximize your fleet’s capacity.

The system automatically accounts for the required skills and attributes while maximizing vehicle capacity. This helps you avoid the monumental task of going through billions of possible combinations. Additionally, learn more about Mixed Capacity Fleet routing. NOTE: When Mixed Fleet Routing and Driver Skills are enabled, both will be applied when optimizing routes. Furthermore, when either Mixed Fleet Routing or Driver Skills are enabled, only the enabled feature will be used.

Add Custom Capacity Profiles And Vehicle Attributes To Your Fleet Vehicles

To plan Mixed Fleet routes with Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes, create Mixed Fleet Optimization Profiles. To do so, add Capacity Profiles to Vehicles. Go to “Team” and then “Vehicles” from the Navigation Menu. On the Vehicles List, click the Pencil Icon next to the preferred Vehicle to open the “Edit Vehicle” screen.

Then, in the “Vehicle Profile” section, select a Capacity Profile or click “Manage Capacity Profiles” to create one. Route4Me’s Capacity Profiles enable you to create Vehicle capacity templates that define the maximum volume, weight, number of pieces, or revenue that a Vehicle can carry. Furthermore, you can set your preferred Vehicle Attributes.  These attributes will be matched to the required attributes of route addresses. When the Vehicle Attributes match the required address attributes, the Vehicle can be automatically assigned to the respective address. Next, Click the “Save Vehicle” button.

Add Custom Driver Skills Or Driver Tags To Your Route4Me Drivers

To add Driver Skills to a Driver, go to “Team” and then “Users” from the Navigation Menu. Then, click the Three-dot Icon next to the preferred Driver and select “Edit” from the menu. NOTE: You can only add Driver Skills to the “Driver” user type. Set this user type for field employees you want to add skills to. Additionally, learn more about Route4Me’s User Types and Team Hierarchy.

Then, on the “Edit User” screen, select the “Driver Skills” tab. Next, click the “Driver Skills” field and enter your preferred custom skills. These Driver Skills will be matched to the required skills of addresses.

Furthermore, you can use the “Assigned Vehicle” field and select or search for a Vehicle to assign to the Driver. To automatically assign the most optimal vehicle from your fleet, leave the “Assigned Vehicle” field empty. This ensures that your Drivers and Vehicles can optimally meet customer requirements and helps you avoid the complexity of comparing Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes to the requirements of every destination manually. NOTE: Vehicles manually assigned to Drivers will be used when planning routes. Leave the “Assigned Vehicle” field empty to automatically assign optimal Vehicles to Drivers.

Optimize Mixed Fleet Routes With Driver Skills And Vehicle Attributes

Then, to plan one or multiple mixed fleet routes with your preferred requirements, go to “Routes” and then “Plan New Route” from the Navigation Menu. After that, select “Upload a File” or “Import Data”.

Next, select an Optimization Profile or click the “Skip” button to manually configure optimization settings.

When creating or editing an existing Optimization Profile, go to the “Optimization” tab. Then, check the “Use vehicles with various capacity profiles” box to enable mixed fleet routing. Moreover, you can click the “Manage Vehicles” and “Manage Capacity Profiles” buttons to access the respective options. Additionally, learn more about using Optimization Profiles.

When adjusting optimization settings manually, go to the “Optimization” tab and select “Multiple Drivers” in the “Optimization” section. Then, in the “Mixed Vehicles Fleet” section, check the box next to “Enable Mixed Vehicles Fleet“. Select the preferred Vehicles with their respective Capacity Profiles and click the “Create Route and Proceed to Add Addresses” button.

After selecting an Optimization Profile or adjusting optimization settings, upload or import your spreadsheet with addresses. Add the “Required_Skills” column for required Driver Skills and Vehicle Attributes. When planning Mixed Fleet routes, add columns for Cube, Weight, Pieces, or Revenue capacity requirements for each address in the spreadsheet. Additionally, learn more about Route4Me’s spreadsheet requirements.

Once you upload or import your route data spreadsheet, Route4Me processes the imported data and displays it in the “Importing Addresses into Route” window. To process the data automatically, select the Auto (attempt detection) option respectively. Alternatively, you can manually match column titles to the data contained in the corresponding columns. Verify that your data was imported correctly and click the Continue to Review button.

Then, the software plans the most optimal number of routes based on your optimization settings. Route4Me matches the required skills and attributes of addresses to the corresponding Drivers and Vehicles and distributes destinations into the most optimal sequence and number of routes. Furthermore, each vehicle’s capacity is maximized, and vehicles are assigned to the most efficient routes that maximally utilize their capacity.