Vehicle scheduling and routing with compartments

• US 20080065262A1
• Filed: 08/31/2006
• Published: 03/13/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Eckert, Jochen Christoph, Schumm, Carsten, Engelmann, Thomas, Gottlieb, Jens
• Granted Patent: US 8,321,258 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/213
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/40 Business processes related to the transportation industry shipping G06Q10/083

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention include a system for scheduling the shipment of a set of products. The shipment may be loaded into a set of vehicles and further configured to fit a set of compartments on those vehicles. The system may include attempts to fill each vehicle and the compartments of each vehicle. The system may include evaluating a set of constraints on the shipment. The constraints may include a complex logical statement.

Claims

3. The method of 1, further comprising:

determining a second configuration with the item in a second compartment of the first vehicle if the first configuration is not feasible.

4. The method of 1, further comprising:

performing a local search to optimize a placement of the item in at least one of a plurality of compartments of the first vehicle.

17. A system comprising:

a demand order generating module, to generate a set of demand orders;

a transportation determination module to receive the set of demand orders and generate a set of transportation orders; and

a compartment determination module to receive a transportation order and generate an indication of feasibility based on compatibility of an assignment of the transportation order to a compartment of a vehicle.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising:

a user interface module to display vehicle, compartment and transportation order arrangement.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the compartment determination module operates transparently to the transportation determination module.

21. The system of claim 17, further comprising:

a serialization module to prepare a set of transportation orders for compartmentalization analysis.

22. The system of claim 17, wherein the set of transportation orders are serialized in an order based on a predetermined characteristic of the set of transportation orders.

19. The system of 17, further comprising:

a storage device to store a compartment configuration data structure of a vehicle with assignments of orders to compartments.

23. A machine readable medium having a set of instructions stored therein which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations comprising:

receiving a set of transportation orders;

iterating through permutations of the transportation orders distributed across compartments of a set of vehicles; and

identifying configurations that meet a set of predetermined constraints related to the compartments and transportation orders.

1. A method comprising:

receiving a transportation order indicating an item to be transported;

determining a first configuration with the item in a first compartment of a first vehicle; and

generating an indicator of feasibility for the first configuration based on whether the first configuration meets a first set of transportation constraints.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing the first configuration in a compartment configuration data structure for the first vehicle.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

serializing a set of transportation orders to determine feasibility of a transportation plan based on whether the set of transportation orders can be distributed across a plurality of compartments of a of vehicle.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the set of transportation orders are serialized in an order based on a predetermined characteristic of the set of transportation orders.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

checking a capacity of the first compartment of the first vehicle.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining compatibility of the item with the first compartment.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining compatibility of a first set of items with a second set of items in the first compartment.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining compatibility of a first item with a second item in the first compartment.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

displaying a set of transportation orders organized by vehicle and compartment.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

verifying that the first configuration does not exceed a capacity of a vehicle.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

verifying that the first configuration does not exceed the capacity of a compartment.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

verifying that transportation orders assigned to the first compartment do not exceed a capacity of the first vehicle.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

verifying that transportation orders assigned to the first vehicle do not exceed vehicle capacity.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a relationship between vehicle capacity usage and number of items placed in the vehicle using a function representing compartment storage characteristics.

24. The machine readable medium of claim 23, having a further set of instructions stored therein which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations further comprising:

generating a configuration of the set of transportation orders distributed across compartments of the set of vehicles.

25. The machine readable medium of claim 23, having a further set of instructions stored therein which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations further comprising:

displaying the set of transportation orders organized by vehicle and compartment.

25-1. The machine readable medium of claim 23, having a further set of instructions stored therein which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations further comprising:

performing any one of local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, mixed integer programming or constraint programming to optimize a placement of a set of items from a transportation order across compartments of a vehicle during each iteration.

26. An apparatus comprising:

means for receiving a set of transportation orders;

means for iterating through permutations of the transportation orders distributed across compartments of a set of vehicles; and

means for identifying configurations that meet a set of predetermined criteria related to the compartments.

27. The apparatus of claim 26, further comprising:

means for generating a configuration of the set of transportation orders distributed across compartments of the set of vehicles.

28. The apparatus of claim 26, further comprising:

means for displaying the set of transportation orders organized by vehicle and compartment.

29. The apparatus of claim 26, further comprising:

means for performing any one of local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, mixed integer programming or constraint programming to optimize a placement of a set of items from a transportation order across compartments of a vehicle during each iteration.