Route optimization with Cloud Fleet Routing and Fleet Engine

This document provides an overview for how to perform fleet-wide route optimization for your daily delivery operations using two products:

  • Last Mile Fleet Solution Fleet Engine (LMFS)
  • Google Cloud Fleet Routing (CFR)

By itself, Fleet Engine can take input from any route solver using the route plans you provide to the Fleet Engine backend. However, if you do not have your own route solver, or if you are interested in exploring other routing solutions, you can use Cloud Fleet Routing in conjunction with Fleet Engine to do continuous route optimization throughout the day.

Introduction

In your daily delivery operations, your fleet solution would typically use Last Mile Fleet Solution services and Cloud Fleet Routing for the following route optimization workflows:

  • Initial route planning—define your daily route plans using your route solver and input them into Fleet Engine for visibility by drivers, execution, and tracking.
  • Re-optimization—select specific routes in the middle of the day to address route changes, such as traffic issues or changes to time windows, and re-optimize for more streamlined driver and customer experience.
  • New stop allocations—allocate new stops, such as ad hoc pickup requests, across existing routes.

Cloud Fleet Routing and Fleet Engine provide a combination of planning and tracking functionality to make this possible.

Cloud Fleet Routing

Google Cloud Fleet Routing (CFR) addresses complex vehicle routing needs, such as creating a plan for deliveries and delivery vehicles, while also applying constraints such as pickup time and package weight. CFR can create routing plans either asynchronously or in near realtime, depending on the number of vehicles in your routing plan. For more information about Cloud Fleet Routing, see the Cloud Fleet Routing documentation.

Fleet Engine

Fleet Engine is part of Last Mile Fleet Solution services. With Fleet Engine, you model your fleet, plan driver activities, and maintain real-time tracking of packages as your drivers deliver them. Modeling your fleet involves defining vehicles, tasks, stops, and route segments. You can access Fleet Engine Deliveries API via mobile client SDKs, server side Java libraries, or REST APIs.

System components

The following diagram describes how your own systems would integrate Fleet Engine, Last Mile Fleet Solution APIs, and Cloud Fleet Routing for a system that enhances and optimizes your planning and daily fleet operations. In this diagram, CFR uses Google Maps Distance Matrix services and data for its problem solving, but your integration can use other providers instead.

Each component encompasses specific functionality across your fleet management system:

  • Your driver application — You create iOS and Android mobile applications for your drivers using the Driver and Navigation SDKs. The Driver SDK enables real-time updates of deliveries, vehicle locations, and order statuses, which you can display in your app as desired. See the Driver SDK documentation: Android | iOS. See the [Navigation SDK documentation)(/maps/documentation/navigation).
  • Your operations — You can create a web dashboard built with Google Fleet Tracking Library to show live data from all vehicles. With this, you can orchestrate and monitor your fleet. See Track Shipments with the JavaScript Fleet Tracking Library.
  • Your systems — Your backend services and databases enable the secure daily operations of your business.
  • Google Systems — Google Cloud Fleet Routing uses the Distance Matrix API to find travel distance and time for multiple locations. The output of Cloud Fleet Routing can be used as input for your route plans via the Fleet Engine Deliveries API. This then communicates to your operations dashboard and your backend services.

Your solution might also use the Fleet Engine Logging service. With this, you receive real-time information about updates to entities inside Last Mile Fleet Solution. You can also use the logging info to create derived metrics, tables, and dashboards.

Next steps

If you are interested in exploring how to integrate Fleet Engine with Cloud Fleet Routing, see the following: