The next release of ODL Live will support pickup delay optimisation throughout the optimisation process, which lets it generate more efficient delivery routes for passenger transportation, food deliveries or any vehicle routing problem with time windows and on-board time constraints.

Pickup-delivery vehicle routing problems can have limits on how long items are on-board - e.g. chilled food in a non-refrigerated vehicle or any hot food. When stops also have tight time windows, a route optimiser algorithm can only plan efficient routes if it can delay pickup times, to minimise waiting at later stops, and therefore minimise on-board time.

This create a new optimisation problem with 3 decision variables – (1) assignment of job to vehicle, (2) sequence of stops, (3) deciding delayed pickup times.

The following infographic is derived from one of our unit test cases for this new release.