Truck planning optimization

[ayadav8]

Hello,

I am new to optimization with Alteryx. I have a basic truck planning problem which is grouped by Date, Start and End locations. The objective is to determine which combination of weights to go together to minimize the number of trucks. We cannot combine weights from other groups. The max capacity of a truck is 44,000

Also attaching an example file. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

[AmeliaG]

Hi @ayadav8,

Thanks for your question! An iterative macro will allow you to do this planning. (You may need to wrap in a batch macro in order to take each group individually). 

Here is a great knowledgebase article describing Iterative Macros. 

Here is an on-demand training video for Iterative macros. 

Hope this helps!

Amelia

[ayadav8]

@AmeliaG thanks for the suggestion but when I tried connecting it to my problem, it is confusing me. I tried looking at other community posts but I am still unclear. 

[jdunkerley79 · Accepted solution]

That's a really interesting (and computationally complicated) problem.

As @AmeliaG said I think the best approach is a combination of batch and iterative macros. We run an allocation for each day, start and end (using a batch macro to pick each set).

The allocation engine I have put together works off an idea from @Claje:

- Working from largest item down to smallest

- Assign to an existing truck if there is space otherwise add a new truck and assign there

This is built as an iterative macro. 

The first block picks the next item to allocate

The block at the bottom decides which truck to assign the item to or adds to new one

Finally, we record the allocation and then see if anything else left to iterate over

I think this approach will give a reasonable answer. I can imagine there could be edge cases where it does not produce the optimal answer however though.

Hope it helps you get started

[ayadav8]

This is really great. Thanks so much @jdunkerley79

[Nadim_Hajjar]

Hi, how do we change the max truck size?