1. What is Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin?

Dynamic Route Optimization considers changes in the environment to optimize transportation routes automatically. Dynamic Route Optimization does not consider fixed routes stored in databases and rule-based systems but instead generates the best routes depending on the current conditions such as traffic, customer demand, and availability of vehicles. Dynamic Route Optimization is now a reality thanks to high-speed and practical algorithms developed by SmartOpt™ and embedded into the optimization engine of RouteOpt™. A Logistics Digital Twin is a virtual and digital model of a real logistics infrastructure and operations that simulates both the physical state and behavior. Therefore, every logistics system has a unique logistics digital twin to reflect the uniqueness of the system. Logistics Digital Twin is connected to different information sources such as IoT, enabled devices and databases to automatically update themselves and respond to changes.

2. How industries can drive Dynamic Route Optimization and create the best Logistics Digital Twin?

Dynamic Route Optimization requires a Logistics Digital Twin to provide the logistics system representation, update itself automatically using data from different sources and high-speed, accurate and effective optimization algorithms. With the provided Dynamic Route Optimization, companies can respond to changes quickly and optimally. The product is then giving companies the agility that has become a requirement in 21st-century logistics systems. All manufacturing and service sector companies need dynamic route optimization supported by logistics digital twin to respond to customer requests on time while minimizing their cost of operations.

3. Why use Dynamic Route Optimization solution?

Dynamic Route Optimization has become a necessity in responding to customer demand effectively. Dynamic Route Optimization uses logistics digital twin to represent the complex behavior of the routing problem accurately. The complexities such as traffic congestion levels, weather on transportation times and, customer demand changes make it impossible to manage the routing operations manually. To solve this, you should use Dynamic Route Optimization solution. It will help you gain profit by optimizing your route operations and by decreasing the work needed on route planning by automating the planning process with the logistics optimization software.

The future use of Dynamic Route Optimization solution is for further automating the supply chain operations. Today many leading companies in different sectors are using automation in their warehouses. Also, autonomous driving is fast becoming a reality that will open intra-facility and inter-facility integration possibilities. These advances will require a Logistics Digital Twin and Dynamic Route Optimization. Why not start automate today?

4. 10 factors to consider when choosing Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin solution.

If you doubt any one or more of the following factors in your inbound and outbound logistics operations, you should consider choosing Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin solution.

   •    High transportation costs due to long distances travelled by your fleet.

   •    Low capacity utilization/less than vehicle capacity per trip.

   •    Large fleets with idle vehicles.

   •    Difficulty in managing a large number of vehicles.

   •    Long man-hours are necessary for generating routing schedules resulting in poor use of assets.

   •    Not being able to get good routing plans due to a large number of sites to visit.

   •    Costly contracts for fleet rent and/or logistics service outsourcing.

   •    Difficulty in on-time deliveries.

   •    Low customer satisfaction/service levels.

   •    Standard routing solutions do not satisfy your needs and expectations. Various companies in diverse business sectors have utilized dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin of SmartOpt, proving its effectiveness.

5. How Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin can help you win more business?

Depending on your business type, Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin will bring you different opportunities to expand your business. If you are managing a retail store chain or have dedicated areas for your products in the stores, you can reduce stock-outs and prevent lost sales by optimized route plans of Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin. Suppose you are an online shopping company or doing a cargo shipping business; thanks to the optimized plans of RouteOpt, you can schedule your pickup and deliveries according to the customer needs and achieve increased service levels by higher on-time deliveries. You will be one step beyond your competitors via your service reputation and loyal customers. You can significantly reduce your operating costs by optimizing your routes via Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin. Thus giving you a competitive advantage in terms of pricing while maintaining the same service level among the businesses in your sector. It is up to you to earn higher profits per service or serve a higher number of customers with reduced prices.

6. Tips on how organizations can automate Dynamic Route Planning?

Before giving tips on automating Dynamic Route Planning, I want to mention what is Dynamic Route Planning means first. Dynamic route planning is the ability to operate your route activities based on your company's dynamic needs that can change every day and every hour. To achieve this state of flexible operations that allows you to fine-tune your supply chain operations, you will need the help of software that works and its perks. There are many tips to give for organizations to automate Dynamic Route Planning. The first one is to have routing software that allows you to perform dynamic route planning. Then adjusting your operations for software and dynamic route planning will eventually bring profits for your company. What are those adjustments, you might ask, for example, if your route planning has fixed plans meaning that every day, for every route, that vehicle goes to that depot or shop. These non-flexible structures are becoming expensive and non-optimal to most companies nowadays. The tip I would offer is that using the dynamic route planning software adds flexibility to your routes by allowing you to implement the daily changes our software suggests by calculating daily traffic congestions and demands, maximizing your time and fleet capacity.

7. How does Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin work?

Integration Dynamic Route Optimization and Logistics Digital Twin is the key to achieving the maximum potential from your company's supply chain operations. They take advantage of Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence and apply them to daily supply chain and logistics operations. With the right software, Dynamic Route Optimization and Logistics Digital Twin could work seamlessly. So an intelligent software that uses live traffic and weather data with an interface would be the perfect choice to optimize logistics operations and obtain it dynamically and live.

8. What are the benefits of Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin solution?

The main benefits of the Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin solution are the reduced transportation costs and effective fleet management in your inbound and outbound logistics operations. Routing solutions that are optimized according to your needs provide itineraries with the minimum distance travelled. The solution also includes the best set of vehicles for your daily operations in terms of capacity usage. With higher capacity utilization, you can manage your fleet more effectively, reduce your fleet size and/or improve the composition of your vehicles. Another crucial benefit of the Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin solution is the increased service levels and customer satisfaction. It provides viable site visiting schedules within the customer preferred time windows and increases on-time delivery rates while reducing your penalty costs. You can increase your profitability by the savings you get in your logistics operations and higher customer service levels.

9. How do I decide on the best Route Planning for my company?

Primarily, you need to define your vital interests and goals to achieve by route planning. Your interests may be cost reduction by smaller fleets, shorter travel distances and working hours, increased customer satisfaction/service Levels via on time and scheduled deliveries, higher capacity utilization, etc. With respect to your business needs, you should priorities your goals and evaluate different scenarios like fleet selection, whether to outsource, etc. Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin is capable of integrating your various goals and business limitations in the route planning process and will aid you to decide on the best Route Planning for your company.

10. How Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin can help you optimize your routes?

Dynamic Route Optimization that is supported by Logistics Digital Twin allows you to reflect the realistic state of the system to generate actionable decision regarding routing decision. Most of the time, the results of Dynamic Route Optimization can be implemented automatically without manual interference, saving you time and money.

11. What is Dynamic Route planning, and how can it help you with late deliveries?

Dynamic Route planning is the perfect solution for late deliveries. Since it calculates routes dynamically, it uses real-time traffic information just like we use in our cell phones which gives an estimated time frame to our destination, and most of the time, on average, its estimations are correct. So in Dynamic Route Planning, by using real-time navigation data, you will be informed about the detailed arrival and departure of your deliveries.

12. How to optimize field service routes using Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin?

Dynamic Route Optimization combined with Logistics Digital Twin can help businesses make better field service routes by predicting the required job allocation for the given time and producing cost-efficient routes for the given job. Logistics Digital Twin uses the real data of a business. Knowing the real data helps allocate the people and routes to optimize the number of people and jobs needed for business objectives. Combining this allocation, Dynamic Route Optimization can reduce the driving time, cost, and time by looking at the traffic state and updating its route dynamically. 13. What are the benefits of demand forecasting before route optimization planning? When doing route optimization planning, the aim is to allocate the resources from place A to B while reducing the distance and cost of the route. Here, the cost of the route and the distance of a route depend on the resources that will be allocated. By forecasting the demand prior to route optimization, the allocation of resources is optimized. This optimization will affect the fore coming route optimization by reducing the unnecessary resources transported to your desired location. Hence, prior demand forecasting can decrease the distance and cost of the route even before optimizing the route.

14. How to create cost-effective routes with Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin?

Combining Dynamic Route Optimization and Logistics Digital Twin can create cost-effective routes by allocating correct resources with correct routes. Logistics Digital Twin can use real-life business data to allocate the resources needed for specific business objectives. Dynamic Route Optimization, then, can use these allocated resources to create an optimized route for the given time of the business objective to decrease the driving distance, time and cost.

15. How Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin will revolutionize logistics?

Before answering how Logistics Digital Twin revolutionizes logistics, one should think about what would happen If we stop using databases, spreadsheets, and other business intelligence tools we use nowadays. Those are the digital twins in most of the business. So from that analogy, when your business integrates dynamic Route Optimization and Logistics, there will be a new reality, and it would start to be the de facto of the industry. When its advantages are realized, the revolution will be inevitable. Besides creating a Logistics Digital Twin, Dynamic Route Optimization will optimize supply chain operations by saving costs and human labor, which will again revolutionize the way route planning is done in the industry.

16. Why is the key to green logistics is Dynamic Route Optimization (RouteOpt)?

One of the issues we face in our decade is global warming, CO2 emissions being its primary cause. Transportation of goods globally is among the significant sources of CO2, and green logistics is becoming crucial to reduce this hazard. Put aside the opportunities it provides to the businesses in terms of economic and service level aspects, Dynamic Route Optimization (RouteOpt) aids in reducing CO2 emissions by its optimized distribution/transportation plans. Dynamic Route Optimization is the key to green logistics since it generates environmentally friendly routing solutions. Higher utilization of fleet capacities, shorter total travelled distances significantly reduces the fuel consumption per unit of transferred goods.

17. Why advanced delivery route optimization is essential for companies and their growth?

Companies make deliveries each day to different places and for different businesses. Without optimized delivery routes, companies lose time and money every day as long as they continue using the same routes. Using advanced delivery route optimization, companies start to gain time and money each day by using routes designed to decrease the route's time, distance, and cost.

18. What are the differences between Route optimization and Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin?

Route Optimization, in general, considers a static picture of the logistics system that may not necessarily reflect the current state. However, there are often changes in the logistics systems, such as customer locations, order quantities, logistics infrastructure changes, traffic, and the weather and seasons. Therefore, traditional route optimization falls short of delivering realistic and optimal solutions. On the other hand, Dynamic Route Optimization supported by Logistics Digital Twin is a digital representation of the system that receives data from different sources and updates its state to reflect its actual state. The Dynamic Route Optimization requires high-speed and effective algorithms to generate optimal routes considering the actual status of the system and its environment. Therefore, Dynamic Route Optimization supported by Logistics Digital Twin delivers realistic and optimal solutions.

19. Why algorithmic dynamic route optimization solution is better than a static tool?

An algorithmic dynamic route optimization solution uses the given data with the algorithm to correctly optimize a route used for a specific objective. Static tools use the provided data to optimize a route with the same purpose; however, this process is only done once and with the same parameters. On the other hand, an algorithmic dynamic route optimization solution changes the optimized route depending on the correct parameters at a given time, such as traffic, weather, type of resources transported, and changes in the demand of the business. A static tool would not be sufficient for diverse business needs, whereas an algorithmic dynamic tool would continuously optimize the solution.

20. How can innovative manufacturers utilize Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin solution?

There are several prerequisites to implement Dynamic Route Optimization & Logistics Digital Twin. First, the availability of data in real-time must be implemented. This can be done by employing different IoT enabled devices at different segments of the logistics chain. Then, advanced data analytics tools are needed to process, categorize and organize the continuously updated data. This integration allows the establishment of a digital twin that is continuously fed by data. The next step is implementing tailored digital twin and dynamic route optimization that reflects the system's unique characteristics. Dynamic Route Optimization is now a reality thanks to high-speed and practical algorithms developed by SmartOpt™ and embedded into the optimization engine of RouteOpt™.