Optimal customer route

Rhenus Data Destruction helps companies to destroy archives safely and reliably, whether on paper or on hard disks. With ten trucks, Rhenus collects about 10,000 archives from companies per year or destroys them on the spot. To determine logical routes, a planner used to sort the customers by day and by route based on their zip code, before studying the map to manually optimize the route. Drivers would sometimes complain about illogical routes and simply picked their own route. When manager Kees Hilhorst and Geodan discussed truck logistics in a meeting, Geodan offered to help come up with a solution.

Geodan already had a matching web service: the TSP service, the answer to the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). It answers the question: what is the most logical route along a series of addresses? Rhenus has been able to integrate TSP into its own software. The TSP service uses Geodan's truck network behind the scenes, containing data from our partner TomTom. This shows the speed that trucks drive on average for the entire road network. Together with possible obstacles for trucks, such as bridge heights, and other factors, this determines the most efficient route for visiting customers.

Geodan’s services make routes a lot more efficient. Hilhorst: “It saves a lot of time. Also, it lets us remain independent from external experts, because we continue to work with our own systems and can gain insights from them." Compared to manual planning, it turned out that Rhenus could save almost €50,000 on an annual basis. A tip from the drivers allowed the service to be optimized even more: the customer that’s furthest away, is put at the top of the list, so they get there before the traffic jams start. Rhenus is excited and wants to work with Geodan to expand the system with a notification service to inform customers of the expected arrival time.