Route optimisation for vehicles that have to refill along the way
Streamlet plans the order of the stops and the refills along the way together, not one after the other.
Anyone planning around a limited tank knows how it ends: tours that add up on paper and fall apart in the field. Streamlet keeps track of the tank level and gives you a tour the vehicle can actually drive.
Streamlet was built for Green Ecolution because none of the planning tools we evaluated could express this problem. It plans the irrigation tours there today. If your tours have the same structure, we will work it through for your service area.
Stop order and refills depend on each other
As soon as a vehicle has to refill along the way, the best order of the stops depends on when and where it refills. Deciding both at once is the heart of the problem.
Without planning that takes this as input, there are two options, and both cost you. Planning the tour without the refills gives you a result that will not drive in the field. Cutting the tour into pieces by hand gives up optimising across the whole of it and turns the job into weekly manual work.
Streamlet plans the refill stations in the same optimisation run instead of fitting them in afterwards. At Green Ecolution route optimisation previously ran on a standard engine that could not express several refill stations in the middle of a tour. That is why we built Streamlet ourselves.
What this means in day-to-day operation
A tour that plans the refills along with everything else saves the trips that would otherwise happen when the tank runs dry in the middle of the area. The vehicle visits the stops in the order that fits their time windows and is back at the depot at the end of the shift.
Three inputs are enough
The stops and their demand
Where water has to go and how much. In Green Ecolution this comes from the sensor readings, but it can be supplied without sensors as well.
The vehicles you already have
Water carts, vans and trailers with their water capacity and the time window of the shift. There is no need for a new fleet.
The refill points
Places in the service area where the vehicle can refill along the way. Several points are explicitly supported.
Sensors are not a prerequisite
Route planning works without readings. Sensor data improves the prioritisation because it shows which stops actually need water.
In Green Ecolution the route optimisation is already built in. Anyone using the platform does not have to wire up Streamlet themselves.
Does this fit your planning problem?
Streamlet is tailored to no single industry, what matters is the structure of the tour. The more of these traits your tours have, the more a conversation is worth it.
- Vehicles with limited tank capacity
- Stops with time windows
- Refilling or reloading in the middle of the tour
- Several possible refill stations
- Return to the depot at the end of the shift
Independent of what you carry
Streamlet knows tank capacity and demand, not irrigation. What you carry stays open. Water is the first use case, and Streamlet never assumes it.
Talk about your tours
If your tours look like this, a conversation is worth it. We look at your service area, your vehicles and your refill points and work out what planning the refills along with the tour changes for you. Building it yourself means setting up an optimisation project and keeping it running. With us it is a service, and setup and operation are ours to handle.