Guide · Route optimization
What is route optimization?
Route optimization means finding the best solution for visiting all your points while meeting a set of constraints. A strategic challenge for any organization whose activity involves travel in the field.
It remains to define what the "best" solution actually means. Is it the least expensive one? The one that minimizes CO2 emissions or the number of vehicles used? The one that maximizes service quality? Every organization has its own criteria depending on its business objectives. A "good" route is also a realistic route, one that must not put people in difficulty. In this respect, taking traffic into account is essential in urban logistics and last-mile logistics.
Each business and each context also has its own constraints. For example, parcel couriers must meet delivery time windows, while home-care providers favor stability in their visits (same caregiver, recurring schedules). Repair companies, for their part, must factor in technicians' skills when planning their jobs.
This means that, before the routes themselves, there is a planning phase that defines the tasks to be carried out by each person, and in what order. For the same available resources and the same tasks to perform, some ways of planning are better than others. Building the best possible schedule is, in this context, what we call route optimization.
Who is route optimization for?
In short: any organization whose activity involves travel in the field, from carriers to maintenance services, including delivery, home healthcare and waste collection.
Many activities require men and women to travel in the field: road freight transport, parcel delivery, material transport for construction and civil-engineering trades, home delivery for e-commerce, waste collection, medical care and home visits, cleaning operations, equipment repair and maintenance, and more. Within a single day, the number of stops can vary widely: where a telecom technician performs 3 or 4 jobs a day, an urban delivery driver may drop off up to 150 parcels.
Route planners
Their job is dedicated to route planning. They gain visibility and make better decisions.
The people who carry out the routes
Delivery drivers, nurses, sales teams, maintenance technicians: they follow a clear route plan tailored to their activity.
What are the benefits of route optimization?
In short: lower costs and mileage, a reduced carbon footprint, better service quality and better working conditions for field teams.
As customer expectations grow ever more demanding, logistics and transport players struggle to stay competitive. Route optimization acts on five concrete levers.
Time and productivity gains
Planning is a tedious and complex task. An optimization solution saves many hours by automating low-value tasks. For example, Cerballiance saved one hour a day on planning its biological sample collections.
Cost reduction
Better allocation of resources (drivers, vehicles, fuel) and minimizing their use reduce operating costs. Route optimization can cut route costs by up to 30%, which is significant given carriers' thin margins.
Lower environmental impact
By reducing the number of vehicles, the distance travelled and empty runs, optimization lowers the ecological footprint of transport, a major CO2 emitter.
Improved service quality
Meeting the commitments made, in particular the delivery time windows. Real-time optimization makes it possible to track routes, detect disruptions and keep the customer informed. Vente-unique improved its NPS by 20 points thanks to a route optimization solution.
Better working conditions
Less stressful routes for drivers, and configurable work and rest times to comply with labor laws, improving their working conditions.
How does route optimization work?
In short: route optimization solves a mathematical problem that combines optimization objectives, data (both internal and external) and business constraints, which an algorithm turns into an optimal route plan.
Route optimization at a glance
Objectives
Costs, km, CO2, deadlines
Data
Fleet, teams, activity, maps
Traffic
Historical and real-time
Constraints
Specific business rules
Algorithm
Our optimization engine
Optimized routes
The best possible schedule
In detail
The six elements that feed the optimization
Optimization objectives
The indicators to minimize: OPEX costs, distance travelled, CO2 emissions, route duration, delays, number of vehicles, undelivered volume, time-window compliance, response times. They are specific to each client's business objectives.
The data provided by the client
Information about the fleet (number, characteristics, capacities), the team (skills, schedules, break times) and the activity (parcel characteristics, addresses or geolocation of the points to visit).
Mapping data
It describes a territory's road networks: distance matrices, speed limits and heavy-goods-vehicle restrictions. It often comes from routing and mapping data providers.
Traffic
Historical and real-time traffic is decisive. Few solutions factor it in upstream of the calculations; a correction applied downstream produces less realistic routes. Real-time traffic is essential for continuous optimization.
Business constraints
The rules specific to each activity: preferred areas for certain drivers, parcel handovers at pickup points, deliveries that require two people. Business constraints are endless and often very specific.
The algorithm
It plays a leading role: it is what solves the optimization problem. Whether built in-house, based on a solver or on open-source algorithms, its performance has a major impact on the project's ROI.
Without and with route optimization: concrete examples
In short: without optimization, manual planning multiplies mileage, delays and failed visits; with optimization, routes are calculated automatically, realistic and compliant with your constraints.
| Situation | Without optimization | With optimization |
|---|---|---|
| A technician's specific skills | ✕Manual planning is long and complex and handles skills poorly. An unsuitable technician may be sent, causing a rescheduling. | ✓Jobs are automatically assigned to qualified technicians, ensuring success on the first visit. |
| On-site service duration | ✕Service times are poorly accounted for, causing overruns and a snowball effect on the other appointments. | ✓Precise durations are built in, enabling a realistic schedule that is actually met. |
| Hundreds of delivery points | ✕Routes are often unoptimized, generating unnecessary mileage and wasted time. | ✓The most efficient route is calculated automatically, reducing distance and time on the road. |
| Traffic jams or accidents on the road | ✕A fixed route that ignores traffic disruptions, causing significant delays. | ✓The route is adjusted in real time to avoid incidents, limiting delays and costs. |
| Time windows to meet | ✕Time constraints are ignored or poorly handled, leading to late deliveries and customer dissatisfaction. | ✓Time windows are strictly respected, ensuring service quality and customer loyalty. |
They trust us
Customer results with route optimization
After just 15 days, our NPS rose by 20 points, which is huge!+20 NPS points in 15 days
Sébastien Bellone
Vente-unique, Director of Transport & Reverse Logistics
95% of our customers are now delivered within the time window given at the time of their order.95% delivered within the window
Elliott Royer
Vente-unique, Transport Project Manager
Time-window compliance for our Predict home delivery service improved by 4%.+4% time-window compliance
Vincent Perret
DPD France, Operations Director
The Kardinal solution lets us train a new operator in 15 days.Training in 15 days
Luc Delbriel
Glasseo, Manager
The strong point of the Kardinal solution was the continuous optimization that other vendors did not offer.
Baptiste Demailly
Orange Web, Project Manager
We were looking for a real-time optimizer, and the only one on the market today offering this type of solution is Kardinal.
Benjamin Legendre
Groupe STERNE, Operations Director
Our field teams benefited from Kardinal's extremely strong and powerful support.
Samuel Gangnant
DPD France, Managing Director
Thanks to Kardinal, we can simulate different organizational models.
Vincent Amant
DPD France, National Performance & Methods Manager
The Kardinal solution brings drivers a bit of comfort and peace of mind.
Sébastien Chalvet
Groupe STERNE, Operations Manager
2025 benchmark of route optimization APIs
Kardinal ran a benchmark of 8 major API providers (including Google, GraphHopper, Routific), analyzing 64 constraints and features representative of real use cases: parcel delivery, fresh products, waste, chartering.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about route optimization
Route optimization means determining the best way to visit a set of points while meeting constraints such as time windows, vehicle capacities, skills or traffic. The goal is to build the best possible schedule according to the company's own criteria: costs, mileage, CO2 emissions or service quality.
It is used to plan more efficient routes in order to reduce costs and mileage, meet the commitments made to customers, lower the carbon footprint and improve the working conditions of field teams.
Any activity that involves travel in the field is concerned: freight transport, parcel delivery, construction, e-commerce, waste collection, home care and visits, cleaning, maintenance and repair. It helps both planners and the people who carry out the routes.
It solves a mathematical problem that combines optimization objectives, data (fleet, teams, activity, mapping, traffic) and business constraints. An algorithm then computes the best possible route plan based on these elements.
The main benefits are time saved on planning, lower operating costs, reduced CO2 emissions, better service quality and better working conditions for drivers. These gains are measurable and are seen across many customers.
Depending on the activity, optimization can reduce route costs by up to around 30%. The savings come from mileage, fuel, the number of vehicles used and the time spent planning.
Planning defines the tasks to be carried out and their order for each resource. Optimization goes further: among all possible plans, for equal resources and tasks, it looks for the best one according to the company's criteria, such as cost or service quality.
It is continuous optimization that adjusts routes while they are under way, incorporating real-time traffic and field disruptions. It makes it possible to inform customers of any delays and to take corrective action on routes in progress.
