NVD ConfigurationConfiguration

Overview

The configuration for a Nominated Visit Day (NVD) model is designed to encapsulate the high-level features that are present in periodic NVD problems. Since NVDs are normally specified for sales-representatives (often simply called sales-reps) concepts such as vehicle capacities (like in the IVR model) aren’t typically used in this context. What is important is visit frequency and ensuring that repeated visits to certain customers keep to a certain visit profile. The high level concepts being modelled are distance, time, the period and the week length.

Applicable models

• NVD nvd-hap0j2y4zlm1

Configuration

The configuration object provides a mechanism to specify the shape of the NVD model being solved.

Schema definition

message Configuration {
  required eMeasurementUnit timeUnit = 1 [default = MINUTES];
  required float timeCoef = 2 [default = 1.0];
  required float timeCostCoef = 3 [default = 1.0];
  required eMeasurementUnit distanceUnit = 4 [default = KILOMETRES];
  required float distanceCostCoef = 5 [default = 1.0];
  required float intraTerritoryBalance = 4 [default = 1.0];  
  required float interTerritoryBalance = 5 [default = 1.0];  
  required int32 weekLength = 6;
  required int32 periodLength = 7;
}

Fields

timeUnit

The units in which the time dimension is being populated. This should be consistent with other quantities or windows specified in the model (such as visit times or windows).

timeCoef

The coefficient (or multiplier) that should be applied to the time dimension. A value of 1.0 will use road network time quantities “as is”. A coefficient greater than 1.0 will increase the transit quantities proportionately between different visit locations, and a value less than 1.0 will similarly decrease the transit times between different locations. Valid coefficient values should be greater than or equal to zero.

timeCostCoef

The monetary unit of cost per unit of time (i.e. cost per minute). A value of 1.0 indicates a cost of one unit per unit (specified in timeUnit) of time.

distanceUnit

The units in which the distance dimension is being measured.

distanceCostCoef

The monetary unit of cost per unit of distance (i.e. cost per km/mile).

intraTerritoryBalance

The emphasis that should be placed on the balance within a territory (i.e. across days for a particular sales-rep).

interTerritoryBalance

The emphasis that should be placed on the balance between territories (i.e. between sales-reps).

weekLength

The length of the workweek. This is typically 5, 6 or 7. The available working hours per day are provided on a per-territory basis.

periodLength

The total number of days over which we are planning. Must be a value which is a multiple of the week length. Typical examples are a week length of 5 which may correspond to a period length of 5 (to plan a representative weekly cycle), 10 for a two-weekly cycle or 20 for a monthly cycle. A longer week length, such as 6 days, would correspond to period lengths of 6, 12 and 24 for weekly, bi-weekly or monthly cycle planning.

Examples

This example illustrates a configuration for a monthly call-cycle for a rep who works from Monday to Friday (week length of 5). The period length is 20 days which corresponds to 4 weeks. The cost per minute is 0.1 monetary units and the cost per km is 1 monetary unit. This will constitute the main cost equation for the optimiser from a routing-perspective. The intra and inter-territory balance are both set to 1 which indicates that the user preference is indifference between these measurements but that the territories should, non the less, be balanced.

timeUnit: MINUTES
timeCoef: 0.1
timeCostCoef: 0
distanceUnit: KILOMETRES
distanceCostCoef: 1
intraTerritoryBalance: 1
interTerritoryBalance: 1
weekLength: 5
periodLength: 20

Configuration.eMeasurementUnit

Defines a measurement unit used in a configuration definition.

Schema definition

enum eMeasurementUnit {
  SECONDS = 0;     // time
  MINUTES = 1;     // time
  HOURS = 2;       // time
  DAYS = 3;        // time
  KILOMETRES = 4;  // distance
  MILES = 5;       // distance
}

Notes

• A time measurement unit may only be used with a time configuration. Similarly for the distance measurement units. A mismatch of units will result in an error condition being returned by the API.