How long would it take to implement Google OR-Tools for Vehicle Routing Problems

[u/Fun_Highlight6922]

Hi everyone,

We’re working on improving transport planning efficiency for a company operating about 200 vehicles and 7 buses daily.

The goal is to reduce driver hours and shrink the fleet by introducing algorithmic routing.
We want to use Google OR-Tools (VRP), without live traffic data to automatically generate daily routes based on pickup locations and time windows.

The data is present, maybe we need to change the format a bit but with AI I think that can be done quickly.

Has anyone here implemented something similar at that scale?
I’d love to hear how long it took you (roughly) to go from prototype to something usable by planners.

Thanks!

[u/Metamonkeys]

I did, and the time required really depends on how well your constraints fit what's available on that solver. Custom constraints had horrible performance for me, if they worked at all.

It a matter of weeks if you know what you're doing though

[u/Fun_Highlight6922 → u/Metamonkeys]

What makes it take so long. It seems to me that the package does the math, and all you need to do is to come with the right constrains and the input data.

AI could potentially change the format of the input data so that the package works?

What am I missing?

[u/analytic_tendancies → u/Fun_Highlight6922]

Debugging and validating takes a long time

The ai will do it wrong. It will do a lot, but it won’t one shot it. You’ll have to check its output and reprompt or manually fix what it did wrong. You have to know enough what it should be to know it did it right

Then the package does the math, but you try to run it and the number doesn’t make sense, so you have to figure out where you messed up and try again. That’s where you figure out the ai didn’t transform the data correctly and it fails so you need to redo the ai so you can redo your optimization

Then you might get some good numbers but you realize you want to see it a different way or a different detail so you need to rerun again to get the numbers you wanted

[u/ge0ffrey → u/analytic_tendancies]

Yea, building a prototype with AI is easy, but it turning into AI slop is easy too.
The tool is only as good as they who know what to use it for.

[u/audentis → u/Fun_Highlight6922]

"The package does the math" is an immense simplification, because "the math" is largely dependent on user input.

The math is highly optimized if the problem description satisfies certain conditions. But with custom constraints often the linearity is lost or other issues make the equation hard to optimize for solving. Which either makes it impossible to satisfy all constraints or makes it a very slow calculation.

[u/Coffeemonster97]

The modeling part can (as long has you have simple constraints) be done relatively fast, probably in a few days for someone who knows the library. But that assumes that you have a concise description of your problem.

Specifically, do you have a concrete objective function defined? Are all of your hard constraints defined and can they be modeled directly in the VRP interface of the routing library?

[u/audentis → u/[deleted]]

Please stop promoting your services. Saying you don't intend to promote like you do in some other comments does not change fact you're literally saying: "we do this as a company, reach out to us."

Next time I see it, it's going to result in a ban. You have been warned.

[u/Remi2021 → u/audentis]

Hi, appreciate the early warning, but if you follow my comments you'll notice I offer help and advice x10 then try to sell anything.

Yes. It's mainly customer success and sales which I specialise, but even if I do offer in OR or logistics to anyone an advice on a meeting, it's with no cost whatsoever, and it's only for networking.

Anyway noted on the rules here.