Route4Me Depot Analyzer Tool

Type in a name for the simulation (such as the name of the region or time period in the year).

Next, prepare the files for upload. You need to create a file for your depots and one for your locations.
You can download sample files to see how the two spreadsheets need to be formatted. The Depots file can include up to 500 addresses.

Next, fill in the simulation assumptions for the warehouse data analytics tools to process.

• Peak Season Start Date – The beginning of the peak season for your business (for example Black Friday). Peak Season time ranges permit you to specify an increased labor cost;
• Peak Season Stop Date – The end of your peak season (for example Christmas Day). Peak Season time ranges permit you to specify an increased labor cost;
• Vehicle Cost per Time Period – Vehicle Cost per period of time. This can be hourly, daily or monthly;
• Cost per Vehicle (in dollars) – The number of dollars you expect to pay per vehicle on average, based on the selected period of time;
• Cost per Gallon (in dollars) – The number of dollars you expect to pay per gallon on average;
• Vehicle Miles per Gallon – The average number of miles per gallon for vehicles in your fleet;
• Vehicle One Time Fee (in dollars) – This is the amount of dollars you pay for a vehicle one time in a year (for example: vehicle insurance, security deposit, etc);
• Cost per Driver per Hour (in dollars) – The total hourly cost associated with each of your drivers;
• Average Minutes per Stop – The average number of minutes you expect to spend at each location. If your uploaded orders file has stop-specific minutes per location, it will overwrite this value;
• Work days in the year – The total number of work days per year;
• Hours per Day per Driver – The average number of hours each of your drivers will work per day;
• Cost Increment per Driver per Hour “Peak Season” – Temporary drivers and/or vehicles may be in higher demand during peak seasons. Get more realistic labor costs by increasing the average compensation per driver by a specific percentage;
• Departure Day – To take traffic into account when running a simulation, select a specific day of the year;
• Departure Time – To take traffic into account when running a simulation, select a specific time of day when vehicles will depart the depots.

After you’re done filling in your assumptions, click Begin Analysis.

The optimization will apply to all the depots and multiple routes will be created. Depending on the number of locations, you may get one or multiple routes for each depot.

The warehouse data analytics tools will display the progress of the simulation on the main page.

The status of the simulation will be changed to Completed when the warehouse data analytics tools are done processing the information.

Simulated routes will also be added to your routes list. You can open and modify them as you see fit.

On the Depots App home page, click on the simulation name to open the detailed analysis.

The timeline at the top of the screen allows you to adjust the duration of the simulation. Moving the cursor on the timeline will automatically update simulation data, such as total time and total costs.

The simulation data is split into 8 sections.

Assumptions – the simulation assumptions that were input when the simulation was created.

Depots – detailed information about the depots and about the associated routes.

Forecasting – depot, operational and total costs associated with each depot for the selected time frame.

Costs – detailed cost analysis per depot (daily depot cost, distance, fuel, vehicle, labor and totals).

Time – estimated travel, wait, service, and total times for all depots.

Rates – estimated cost and profit per mile and kilometer.

Density – stops and capacity density indicators for all depots.

Utilization – operational and capacity requirements for each depot.

You can also download the warehouse data analytics simulation data as a spreadsheet file. Go to the main page of the Depot Analyzer app and click on the download button in the results column.

You can download a sample depot simulation output file below:
depot_simulation_analysis_sample.xlsx