Vehicle Routing Problem- Max Oder Count Greater Than One Thousand

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08-02-2021 11:49 AM
AriLukas
Occasional Contributor

Hello,

This is my first experience with the Vehicle Routing Problem extension. I am working with it in ArcGIS Pro  2.8.1

I am trying to create routes for our meter readers for each billing cycle; a total of 6 cycles with roughly 25,400 stops. I am using home address points with an associated utility service as input for orders in the VRP extension. The smallest cycle has 2,500 stops and the largest has roughly 6,200 (in downtown area). The meter readers can easily read 1100+ records in a day, especially in downtown as they only need to drive by the location in order to read the meter. 

I would like to have one route for each cycle and depending on how far they get that day they can simply pick up where they left off the next day and continue on the route.

When I input 2,500 in Max Order Count then tried to run the solve for routing I received an error: VRP Solver failed due to invalid input; Route has a MaxOrderCount value greater than one thousand.

I went back, used 1000 as max order count and broke up into three capacities. The only problem with that is the tool assumes there are 3 trucks going simultaneously and there doesn't seem to be any connection between route1A, route1B, etc.  

With all that said I am trying to decide best course of action. Is there a way to increase the allowed MaxOrderCount? Would it be better to create initial route with only 1000 max order count used then use last location as the 'Depot' for the next route and create multiple VRP datasets for each cycle and combine all at end to create one cohesive route? Or is there a much easier, straightforward method that I am missing?

Any insight or advice would be greatly appreciated!

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HeatherMoe
Esri Contributor

Hello,

The density of a meter reading problem is not something that the VRP solver was designed to support. However, there are some suggestions in this video that might help collapse the problem into something the solver can handle better. These are just workarounds though, and it still might not give you the quality you are needing.  

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HeatherMoe
Esri Contributor

Hello,

The density of a meter reading problem is not something that the VRP solver was designed to support. However, there are some suggestions in this video that might help collapse the problem into something the solver can handle better. These are just workarounds though, and it still might not give you the quality you are needing.  

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