Maximize Fleet Utilization

Product Used: Route Optimization API

Background

A waste collection company services both urban and suburban areas in a large region. In some residential areas, waste generation is lower, especially on certain days, resulting in partially filled trucks when they return to the depot. However, the company’s standard routing practices often dispatch multiple trucks to cover the area’s collection requirements without dynamically optimizing the fleet size. This approach leads to increased operational costs, vehicle wear, and emissions due to underutilized trucks being dispatched daily.

Problem Statement

The waste collection company struggles with:

Fleet Utilization Inefficiencies: Without dynamic adjustment, the company cannot take full advantage of cost savings and efficiency improvements possible through reduced truck deployments.
Increased Operational Costs: Using more trucks than necessary increases fuel consumption, driver hours, and maintenance costs, reducing profit margins.
Environmental Impact: Deploying extra trucks that aren’t fully utilized leads to higher carbon emissions, impacting sustainability goals.

Solution

NextBillion.ai Route Optimization API offers an out-of-the-box to minimize the number of trucks. The waste management company can leverage this feature to dynamically adjust fleet size based on waste volume for a given day and get optimized routes for maximum fleet utilization.

Maximize Fleet Utilization

The route optimization service evaluates the configured waste pickup load requirements and identifies the minimum number of trucks required to service the area effectively. On low-demand days, when load requirements are lower, fewer trucks are dispatched to maximize the capacity utilization.

In order to configure maximum fleet utilization, we ask the optimizer to minimize the number of collection trucks that are used for servicing the waste volume by setting the following parameters:

1
    "options":{
2
        "objective":{
3
            "custom":{
4
                "type":"min",
5
                "value":"vehicles"
6
            }
7
        }
8
    }

Consolidating Stops and Optimizing Paths

By intelligently grouping stops and selecting optimal paths, the service reduces the total number of routes and ensures each truck covers its designated area efficiently. This reduces overall distance traveled and eliminates the need for unnecessary trucks on the road, thereby reducing operational costs.

Sample API request and response

Here is a complete JSON request that we built for this case and the corresponding response.

API Request

1
curl --location 'https://api.nextbillion.io/optimization/v2?key=<your_api_key>' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{...}'

API Response

1
{
2
    "description": "Honoring Access Restrictions For All Truck Types",
3
    "result": '{...}',
4
    "status": "Ok",
5
    "message": ""

We can see from the response that all the waste collections were fulfilled by using a minimal number of trucks. Minimizing the number of trucks needed to cover daily waste collection routes allows waste management companies to cut operational costs and improve sustainability. With fewer trucks deployed, companies can optimize fuel usage, reduce wear on vehicles, and enhance fleet efficiency, ensuring a more profitable and eco-friendly operation.