Introduction

The Pick-up and Delivery Routing model is one of Timefold’s planning AI models and is available on the Timefold Platform.

The Pick-up and Delivery Routing model assigns pick-ups and deliveries to drivers so that multiple pick-ups and deliveries can be made on the same trip while minimizing driving time and customer wait times.

Please note that this model is currently in Preview status (i.e., mostly developed but still being refined and may still introduce backward-incompatible changes). If you’re interested in using this model, please contact us.

The Pick-up and Delivery Routing model is built using the Timefold Solver SDK and the application includes Timefold Enterprise Solver, a scalable optimization engine that can solve complex constraint satisfaction problems.

The Pick-up and Delivery Routing model includes constraints for:

  1. Scheduling customer pick-ups and deliveries when customers have agreed to be available.

  2. Assigning drivers with the right skills for the jobs.

  3. Prioritizing jobs and meeting job requirements.

  4. Fairly assigning work to drivers and respecting their work hours.

For details about these and other constraints, see the Driver resource constraints and Job requirements and tags guides.

Constraints have configurable weights, making them adjustable to meet different business goals and priorities.

The integrated maps service provides real-world routing and optimizing for the shortest travel time or travel distance.

The REST API layer is defined on top of the model and serves as a communication point with the engine to provide a stable interface that allows you to manage the lifecycle of the optimization problem, from submitting the initial dataset to retrieving the final solution.

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