Cost model

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The main goal of Route Optimization API is to find routes with the lowest cost. As such, the cost model is the main driver for route optimization.

The cost model is a set of properties that specify global, vehicle, and shipment costs.

Cost model properties support the following kinds of optimization objectives:

• Efficient vehicle assignments and routes
• Cost-effective pickup and delivery times
• Prioritization of critical shipments

Structure

As shown in the diagram, cost model properties are structured as follows:

• Shipment contains the penaltyCost property.
• Vehicle contains the following properties:
  • fixedCost
  • costPerHour
  • costPerKilometer
  • costPerTraveledHour

This document only highlights essential cost model parameters. See the reference documentation for the complete set of cost parameters.

Essentials checklist

The following checklist describes essential knowledge that prevents potential cost-related mistakes. This list can help you validate your request and troubleshoot your response.

Properties

The following table lists and describes the cost model properties.

Examples

This section covers three types of examples:

• Code samples that illustrate the structure of cost model properties.
• An example scenario that shows one way to use cost model properties to achieve a business objective.
• A request example that includes the values set in the example scenario.

Code samples

The following code sample shows the structure of the cost model properties in Shipment:

{
  "model": {
    "shipments": [ ...
      {
        "penaltyCost": PENALTY_COST
      }
    ],
    "vehicles": [ ...
    ]
  }
}

The following code sample shows the structure of the cost model properties in Vehicle:

{
  "model": {
    "shipments": [ ...
    ],
    "vehicles": [ ...
      {
        "fixedCost": FIXED_COST,
        "costPerKilometer": KILOMETER_COST,
        "costPerHour": HOUR_COST,
        "costPerTraveledHour": TRAVELED_HOUR_COST
      }
    ]
  }
}

Example scenario

This section describes a scenario where you have a doggy daycare business. You are optimizing a route for the truck you use to pick up the dogs from their homes. In this scenario, you want the optimizer to take in account costs related to picking up the dogs and vehicle operations when providing a route.

For this example, one cost unit represents 1 dollar. This means the cost model property values in your request are the following:

Based on costs parameters, the optimizer could make trade-offs that are not obvious to the user, but can be found through optimization.

The following diagram illustrates an example where the optimizer could choose a longer but faster route through the green dashed line to avoid traffic on the dotted red line.

In this scenario, the cost balance of the two routes are the following:

• The green dashed line has a low costPerHour and costPerTraveledHour since it's a fast route avoiding traffic, which is more cost-effective even when the costPerKilometer is high.

• The red dotted line has a low costPerKilometer since it's a direct route, but the costPerHour and costPerTraveledHour are too high due to the wait-times in traffic, making it the most expensive route.

In addition to providing cost-effective routes, the optimizer also provides a summation of the total costs of the delivery routes in the response properties.

Request example

The following example shows the structure of a basic optimizeTours request incorporating the values set in the example scenario:

{
  "model": {
    "shipments": [
      {
        "pickups": [
          {
            "arrivalLocation": {
              "latitude": 37.8024,
              "longitude": -122.4058
            }
          }
        ],
        "deliveries": [
          {
            "arrivalLocation": {
              "latitude": 37.759773,
              "longitude": -122.427063
            }
          }
        ]
        "penaltyCost": 40
      }
    ],
    "vehicles": [
      {
        "startLocation": {
          "latitude": 37.759773,
          "longitude": -122.427063
        },
        "endLocation": {
          "latitude": 37.759773,
          "longitude": -122.427063
        },
        "fixedCost": 30,
        "costPerKilometer": 0.08,
        "costPerHour": 27.7,
        "costPerTraveledHour": 2.5
      }
    ]
  }
}

Response properties

The OptimizeToursResponse message has cost properties that describe the costs incurred in the process of completing a route:

• metrics.costs: The total cost across all routes broken down by cost-related request fields.
• metrics.totalCost: The total cost across all routes summed up.