Terms

This section lists frequently used terms and their meanings:

The capacity is the total load that can be transported by a driver’s vehicle. See the driver capacity guide for more details.

The hard, medium, and soft rules that must be taken into account when creating a pick-up and delivery schedule. Learn more about constraints.

Timefold accepts input datasets that include information about the drivers and the jobs to be scheduled and optimized. Input datasets are created using our predefined model schema which follows the OpenAPI specification. Timefold returns output datasets that contain the optimized solution. See the API spec for more information.

The demand describes the current demand for the driver’s vehicle capacity. A job with a pickup stop that requires 2 units of capacity has a demand of 2. When the job’s delivery is made, the demand will be released and made available again for another job.

A person who can be assigned jobs. They work shifts which have start and end times.

A job is a series of stops that typically include a pick-up location, a delivery location, and can include other locations between the pick-up and delivery.

The load describes how much of the driver’s vehicle capacity is currently being used.

The time period that will have jobs scheduled during a planning session.

A work period with start and end times when a driver is available for jobs. See the shift hours and overtime guide for more details.

Jobs have multiple stops, for instance, pick-up stops, service stops, and delivery stops.