Route planning capabilities

Balance vehicle workloads without an unlimited detour

A short plan can leave one vehicle busy and another underused. Flowtlas offers optional workload balancing for supported service-visit plans, with targets based on available working time and a fixed limit on extra distance. Contact us to confirm generation availability and integrations for your workspace.

Discuss your operational setup See how it works

The operational problem

Route balancing starts with a complete, feasible plan

Workload balancing runs after the planning engine has found a complete plan for the active work. It aims to reduce workload differences while retaining coverage and respecting eligibility, time windows and route constraints. If the baseline is incomplete, it is kept and reported as an incomplete baseline.

Product capability

The inputs and rules behind the plan

Choose visit counts or working time

Visit balancing distributes the target in proportion to each eligible vehicle’s available working time across the planning horizon. Working-time balancing instead considers driving plus service time relative to that availability. Breaks and work limits affect the available time. The tolerance band allows a practical range around each target. It does not promise identical visit counts, equal kilometres or equal counts for every week. Geography, skills and appointment windows can still limit the available choices.

Set a fixed allowance for extra distance

The normal solve uses the complete route plan immediately before balancing as its distance baseline. The configured percentage sets a fixed maximum distance for the entire balancing pass, including requested final endpoint journeys. Defaults are visit counts, a 20% tolerance around the proportional target and at most 10% extra distance. These are configurable planning settings, not promised business results. The planning engine does not have to spend the distance allowance.

Practical workflow

From prepared work to a plan you can review

1
Prepare the work
Supply locations, service durations, visit windows and resource requirements.
2
Define the tours
Specify vehicles, assigned people, start locations and dated working periods.
3
Apply the rules
Include consistent capacity units, eligibility and stop order where needed.
4
Review the result
When generation is enabled, inspect assignments and estimates, including any work left unassigned.

Operational benefits

Check support and compare the report

This optional phase is disabled by default. It currently supports static, single-stop service tasks without load changes, task relations or existing/live plans. It cannot be combined with pickup-and-delivery or live replanning requests in this version.
The report shows baseline and final distance, the fixed distance limit, before-and-after vehicle workloads, deviation and accepted moves. Results distinguish reaching the target band, improving balance and finding no improvement. None guarantees a perfect allocation within the search budget.

In practice

Example: different shifts, different visit targets

Suppose one vehicle has eight available hours and another has four. For 12 equally eligible visits, proportional targets are eight and four visits. This is target arithmetic for a fictional example, not a calculated route.

If the pre-balancing plan totals 100 km and the allowance is 10%, the fixed limit is 110 km. The planning engine may keep the original plan if it cannot improve balance within that cap and the other constraints.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Is workload balancing always enabled?

No. It is optional and disabled by default. Enable it only for the supported service-visit request shape and confirm that your connected workflow exposes the required settings.

Can I balance pickup-and-delivery routes this way?

The current fairness phase accepts static single-stop visits without load changes, task rules or existing/live plans. The planning engine can route pickup-and-delivery work, but that request shape cannot use this optional balancing phase.

Does better balance always mean longer routes?

No. The percentage is an upper limit on additional distance, not a target to spend. The planning engine may improve balance without extra travel, or retain the baseline when no feasible improvement fits the allowance.

Will every vehicle receive the same number of jobs?

Not necessarily. Visit targets are proportional to available working time. Eligibility, windows, the tolerance band and the distance cap also affect the result. Equal workload targets do not imply equal distances.

Work with operational context

See how Flowtlas can support your operational setup.

Discuss your operational setup

Route balancing starts with a complete, feasible plan

The inputs and rules behind the plan

Choose visit counts or working time

Set a fixed allowance for extra distance

From prepared work to a plan you can review

Prepare the work

Define the tours

Apply the rules

Review the result

Check support and compare the report

Example: different shifts, different visit targets

Frequently asked questions

Continue exploring Flowtlas

Route optimization

Working time and availability

Field service planning

See how Flowtlas can support your operational setup.