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Planning intelligence

What this screen is for

Planning intelligence is where you set up the rules the optimiser plans by: which orders are grouped together, how long a driver's shift is, which cargo may not travel on which vehicle, and how orders are consolidated. You open this screen when the Planning board produced a plan you did not want. It has five tabs, and each tab is its own list; a run is given whichever ones you pick on the board.

Who can see it

Everyone who signs in to the Control Tower sees this screen. What each role may change is set by your organisation's administrator; see Roles & permissions.

Where to find it

Planning intelligence in the left-hand menu, under OPERATIONS, just below Planning board. The Manage rule profiles ↗ link on the Planning board opens it on the Rule Profiles tab.

What you see

A title and five tabs: Planning Waves, Transportation Profiles, Compatibility Rules, Freight Unit Build Rules and Rule Profiles. The page opens on Planning Waves.

Planning Waves

A planning wave is a saved set of criteria for grouping orders for a run. A criterion left empty does not restrict anything, so a wave with no criteria takes every unplanned order.

Columns: WAVE (name and description), CRITERIA (small tags such as Service, Depot, Order time, Origin, Delivery, Vehicle, Customer, Priority), MATCHING ORDERS (how many unplanned orders match now), STATUS (Active or Inactive) and ACTIONS.

Transportation Profiles

A transportation profile (also called a policy) is a named set of planning constraints and priorities. The screen is a list of POLICIES on the left (an inactive one is tagged) and a form on the right.

  • Policy name (unique), Status (an inactive policy is not offered to a new run) and Description.
  • Planning constraints & policies: Shift length (minutes), Capacity reserve (%) (the share of each vehicle's capacity that must stay unused), Time window mode (how pickup and delivery windows are treated: Strict or Soft), Allow shift extension with a Maximum extension (minutes), and Allow third-party vehicles (vehicles outside your own fleet).
  • Optimization objectives & weights: how much the optimiser cares about Distance importance, Travel-time importance, Time-window importance, Vehicle-use importance, Shipment priority and Route-duration importance. Each is set to high, medium or low. Commercial cost is not one of them.
  • A bar at the bottom says New policy — not saved yet., Unsaved changes to this policy. or Saved.

Compatibility Rules

Rules about which cargo may travel on which vehicle type. A short summary counts the active blocking and warning rules. Columns: RULE, COMBINATION (cargo type → vehicle type), ACTION, SEVERITY, REASON, STATUS and ACTIONS. Inactive rules are shown faded.

An Allow action permits the combination. Warn still plans the order but flags the conflict to the planner with the reason. Block stops the optimiser putting that cargo on that vehicle type.

Freight Unit Build Rules

Rules for which orders may be consolidated into the same freight unit (a group of orders handled together) before vehicles are assigned. Rules apply in priority order, lower numbers first. Columns: PRI, RULE, CUSTOMER SCOPE, MUST MATCH ON (the attributes orders must share), DO NOT MIX, ACTION (Consolidate or Keep Separate), STATUS and ACTIONS.

Rule Profiles

A rule profile is a named bundle of compatibility rules and freight unit build rules. Picking one on the Planning board applies its active rules in a single choice. Columns: PROFILE, RULES, COMPATIBILITY, FREIGHT, STATUS and ACTIONS.

What you can do

Add a wave, rule or profile. Click New wave, New rule or New profile on the tab. A popup opens (see below). Click its create button to save.

Change one. Click Edit on its row, change the fields, then Save changes.

Delete one. Click Delete and confirm. The confirmation tells you the effect. For a wave: it does not change any order, only how orders would be grouped. For a compatibility rule: the combination is permitted (or no warning is shown) from then on. For a freight rule: orders are no longer grouped or held apart by it. For a rule profile: its rules stay in their own lists, and runs already planned with it keep a record of the rules they used.

Add or change a transportation profile. Click New policy (or select one on the left), fill in the form and click Create policy or Save changes. Reset undoes unsaved edits and Delete removes the selected policy; plans that used it keep their own record of it.

Popups and panels

Planning wave

Opens from New wave and Edit. Wave name (unique) and Description, then the CRITERIA: Service type, Depot, Order time from and Order time to (when the order was received), Origin zone, Delivery zone, Vehicle type, Customer and Priority, each defaulting to "Any". Status is Active or Inactive. Leave a criterion on "Any" to leave it unrestricted.

Compatibility rule

Opens from New rule and Edit on the Compatibility Rules tab. Rule name, Cargo / goods type and Vehicle type (both required, the pair the rule is about), Action (Allow, Warn or Block; a line under it explains the choice), Severity (high, medium or low), Reason and Status. For a Warn rule the reason is shown to the planner alongside the conflict, so say what to check. For the others it records why the rule exists.

Freight unit build rule

Opens from New rule and Edit on the Freight Unit Build Rules tab. Rule name; Customer scope (All Customers, Specific Customer or Customer Group) and, for a specific customer, Customer; MATCHING ATTRIBUTES — INCLUDE / EXCLUDE, a tick list of what orders must share to be put in the same freight unit: Delivery date, Pickup location, Delivery location, Temperature band, Service type, Priority, Cargo / product type and Movement type; Do not mix (Respect or Ignore the order-level instruction); Action (Consolidate or Keep Separate); Rule priority (1 to 100, lower wins) and Status.

Rule profile

Opens from New profile and Edit on the Rule Profiles tab. Profile name, Description, Status, and two tick lists, COMPATIBILITY RULES and FREIGHT UNIT BUILD RULES, each showing how many of the available rules are ticked. Tick to add a rule and untick to remove it; the profile contains exactly what is ticked when you save.

Tips

  • A profile or policy marked Inactive does not appear as a choice on the Planning board (it is listed but greyed out). Set it to Active to use it.
  • No compatibility rules at all means every cargo and vehicle combination is permitted.
  • No freight unit build rules means orders are not consolidated before vehicles are assigned.
  • Changing a rule does not change a plan that already exists. Re-run the optimiser on the board to apply it.
  • Delete confirmations open this page's help. The short "Remove ...?" questions are part of each tab.