Optimization through reliefs

Photo by Марьян Блан | @marjanblan on Unsplash

The competition encourages the analysis of all possible areas of optimization. However, some solutions have a significant impact in terms of organization, both for the operating company and for its employees. This is the case of reliefs, an interesting optimization to study.

The main objective of reliefs is to reduce the number of storages kilometres, by moving the pick-up and drop-off points. However, the mode of reliefs will mainly depend on the network topology. Several calculation sources are available: vehicle task data and agent service data. The relief will allow to maintain the vehicle on its commercial service, with a long material amplitude.

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We have observed three types of relief:

1. The shuttle trip: a specific line, not commercial, is created with route at the relief points.

2. The station relay: the relief point being close to a station (or a possible depot), light cars will be allocated (the relieving agent comes from the depot in a vehicle and the relieved agent returns to the depot with the relieving agent's vehicle), the exploitation of the data makes it possible to determine the number of reliefs vehicles.

3. Carpooling: relieving agents start a relief circuit to go to the relieved agents' stops.

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For these line reliefs, it is necessary to integrate the technical time of the relief (locker, cashier, and preparation), because the relief is not done by running next to the bus. For the agent service, the optimization concerns the time of taking service, the time of travel to the relief points, the time of synchronization of the vehicule, the time of driving, while guaranteeing the commercial schedules.

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Camtek offers the Camtek NVR plugin to calculate the number of vehicles needed for reliefs. The parameters are the agent time, the distance (km), the schedule neighbourhood, and the waiting time (a waiting time to bring two agents can appear as the optimum). And, after calibration and testing, the relief service appears automatically in the service sheets (Camtek FDS plugin).