Data in route optimization
Current state, challenges and best practices. Without reliable data, no route optimization holds up in the field.
The starting point
Data at the heart of logistics processes
The digitalization of transport and logistics has given the industry colossal volumes of data, now at the heart of every process. But the challenge is not to collect as much as possible: it is to have good-quality data, without which the routes calculated remain unusable.
The goal: identify the data genuinely needed to calculate routes, understand the impact of its flaws, and learn the practices that improve its quality.
What you will find inside
The four families of data
Transport orders, available resources, business constraints and the data brought by the software provider.
The impact of poor-quality data
What missing, incorrect or field-remote data actually produces.
The data that exists nowhere
The constraints only operational teams know about, recorded in no database.
Three best practices
How to run a digitalization project without discouraging the teams.
Poor data quality: what impact on route optimization?
Missing or incorrect data
An inaccurate address, swapped fields, a wrong parcel weight: manual entry remains common, and carriers depend on the data collected by their shipper customers.
Consequence: routes calculated from this data are wrong before the day has even started.
Data that exists nowhere
A customer who prefers a particular technician, a driver running late this morning, another who is faster on the area he knows best: these constraints exist only in the heads of the operational teams. Imposed time slots, floors, parking, traffic: the field is rarely present in the databases.
Consequence: without this information, the software cannot produce routes that are optimal from the operational teams' point of view.
More than a software vendor, a partner on data questions: a route optimization provider must support its customers through their transition, understand their data, reveal the constraints of the field and translate them into the route calculation. That is the role Kardinal plays alongside its customers.
