Route Planning from 3 Hours to 20 Minutes per Day

The challenge

Daily route planning for 45 drivers was done manually by a single planner who spent 3 hours every morning allocating and optimising runs. Suboptimal routes drove up fuel costs and last-minute changes caused daily chaos.

Our approach

Automated planning system with route optimisation algorithm, real-time driver tracking, automatic replanning for cancellations or changes, and a digital driver dashboard on smartphone.

1. Phase 1

   Surface the planner's knowledge

   The planner held years of knowledge in his head: which customer only accepts morning deliveries, where a truck cannot turn, which driver knows which zone. Those implicit rules were written down first, because without them no optimisation works.

2. Phase 2

   Clean up address data

   Roughly one in eight addresses proved incomplete or incorrectly geocoded. Route optimisation on polluted address data produces routes that look good but fail in practice.

3. Phase 3

   Optimise with the real constraints

   Time windows, vehicle capacity, driving-time legislation and customer-specific agreements were built in as hard constraints. The system proposes, the planner keeps the final say.

4. Phase 4

   Bring drivers along

   Experienced drivers trust their own route. By letting them flag where the proposal was wrong during the first weeks, both the model and the buy-in improved.

The results

• Planning time from 3 hours to 20 minutes per day
• Fuel consumption reduced by 18%
• On-time delivery accuracy from 71% to 94%
• 12% more runs per driver per day

Frequently asked questions

Does this replace the planner?

No. The planner goes from three hours of puzzling to twenty minutes of checking and adjusting. Their knowledge stays essential, especially for exceptions and customer agreements.

Does the system account for driving-time legislation?

Yes, driving and rest times are built in as hard constraints. A route that breaches the rules is never proposed.

What about last-minute changes?

Urgent jobs can be added during the day, after which the system recalculates the remaining route. In practice this is one of the most-used features.

How many vehicles make this worthwhile?

From roughly five to ten vehicles with many stops per run it becomes interesting. With fewer stops, planning time weighs less heavily.