Fleet management is the most crucial part of logistics as it directly impacts customer experiences and forms the essential link with the global supply chain. Effective fleet management requires logistics companies to efficiently track fleet movements and provide shortest routes towards various delivery points. Nevertheless, many enterprises face numerous challenges with fleet management due to errors in route optimization for fleet carriers. These routing problems may lead to significant delays in shipping schedules. However, in most cases, companies do not take steps to tackle these problems unless they are causing any significant damage. Having such an approach may prove detrimental for logistics companies as they may lead to greater discrepancies.
OptaPlanner is an AI-based constraint solver and planning engine that may prove effective at streamlining various fleet management processes. The software acts as an embeddable planning solution that helps enterprises sail through their routine operational complexities. When it comes to fleet management, OptaPlanner may help solve problems associated with vehicle routing and route optimization.
In this post, we shall talk about the significance of OptaPlanner for fleet management with a focus on the key problem areas it targets.
Also, Read OptaPlanner Software Development: Top Business Use Cases
Common Challenges With Fleet Management
Vehicle routing is one of the most common problems that arise with fleet management in logistics. It is often called the vehicle routing problem (VRP) that refers to the difficulty in determining optimal routes of shipment for a given fleet of vehicles. In more technical terms, VRP is a combinatorial optimization problem that often causes longer shipment delays in logistics and supply chain. According to experts, using mathematical programming algorithms may provide an effective solution to VRPs. As a result, several companies in the logistics industry use advanced heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms to keep VRPs at bay.
Traveling salesman problem (TSP) is the most common type of vehicle routing problem that is often faced by logistics companies. Given below are three main types of vehicle routing problems that are prevalent in today’s hard-pressed business environment.
Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP): it impacts vehicle routing with single-vehicle origin and is solvable through advanced-level heuristics and metaheuristics.
Shortest Path Problem (SPP): this type of problem arises with routing that involves a single origin and destination. If the transportation costs are non-negative, we can solve SSPs using Dijkstra’s algorithm.
Network Flow Problem (NFP): these problems arise while routing shipments when there are multiple origins and destinations. To solve such problems, we ideally use the network simplex algorithm.
Also, Read Essential KPIs To Track Warehouse Management Efficiency
Using OptaPlanner For Fleet Management To Overcome Logistics Challenges
OptaPlanner, as we know, is an AI-based constraint solver that focuses on streamlining diverse business processes by solving complex problems in real-time. It is built on top of Drools, a popular business rules management system (BRMS) and is ideal for solving problems related to vehicle routing, employee rostering, maintenance scheduling, and cloud optimization.
Implementing OptaPlanner for fleet management enables enterprises to sail through their routine operational complexities and build resilience for the future. Besides, it helps overcome challenges in fleet management by building custom business applications to automate complex repetitive tasks using heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms. In doing so, it solves vehicle routing problems by virtue of advanced features like nearby selection, shadow variables, and incremental score calculation. Using OptaPlanner for fleet management combines advanced AI algorithms like Simulated Annealing, Tabu Search and Incremental Score Calculation for effective fleet management.
Wrapping Up
OptaPlanner is an increasingly useful planning engine that offers a complete JVM environment for developers to build custom enterprise applications. From developers’ perspective, it offers an intuitive and user-friendly coding interface with 100 percent Java-based programming. As a result, developers would not face any major difficulties while using OptaPlanner for custom software development. Besides, it is an open-source platform that allows developers to build custom enterprise solutions at no additional costs. As a result, it significantly reduces overall project costs and makes it an ideal platform for small-to-medium enterprises.
Why Choose Oodles ERP For OptaPlanner Application Development?
We are a 360-degree ERP application development company that excels in building custom enterprise solutions for varying business needs. Our end-to-end enterprise solutions include custom OptaPlanner application development services to cross-industry business use cases. Our team of ERP developers specializes in using OptaPlanner to solve complex business problems for diverse business needs. We have successfully completed several full-scale enterprise projects using OptaPlanner for clients from across the globe. We also have a proven track record in implementing OptaPlanner for fleet management to build custom business applications for logistics. To learn more about our OptaPlanner application development services, drop us a line at [email protected].
