Model the work honestly
A stop is more than a coordinate. Record service duration, access rules, vehicle compatibility, load effect, promised window, driver constraints, and dependencies between stops. Defaults should be visible because they can silently dominate the result.
Travel-time inputs need a date, time, direction, vehicle class, and confidence. Historical averages may fail during events or seasonal road changes.
- Capacity dimensions
- Time windows
- Service duration
- Vehicle and road restrictions
Evaluate the plan in operation
Compare planned and actual arrival, service, distance, overtime, missed windows, and manual edits. A lower modeled distance is not useful if dispatchers must repair the route every morning.
Retain the reason for overrides. Repeated human corrections reveal missing constraints or unreliable source data.
Replay a completed day using only information available before dispatch and compare the proposed route with actual outcomes and overrides.