When your driver cannot carry any more
Something must have gone wrong. Your driver was supposed to load those 5 elephants onto his car but he's complaining that he cannot do that. Why can't people follow simple instructions?
Maybe some instructions are impossible to follow... so let's talk about how to avoid capacity problems during planning.
How many capacity types do you need?
As a general rule, there is no harm setting up every single capacity type that is meaningful to you. However, you should be consistent about which capacity types you are actually using for each payload type.
In the example below, if we decide to only use space requirement, we will not need to concern ourselves about filling in the weight and quantity for each item.
Capacity model check!
Avoid cases where Item 1 has only a space requirement, but Item 2 only has a weight requirement. This may result in an unrealistic plan.
How does optimiser work with capacity?
In general, optimiser ensures none of the carrying capacity are violated. This means that three checks are done through the planning timeline.
- Carrying capacity in units is not exceeded by sum of all item quantities
- Weight capacity in kg is not exceeded by sum of all item (weight x quantities)
- Space capacity in cm3 is not exceeded by sum of all (volume x quantities). Volume is calculated by multiplying length, width and height.
Space efficiency and loading sequence
Sometimes it is impossible to fully utilise the space available on a vehicle. This is because loading of the vehicle might be based on how things should be unloaded later on.
It could be advisable to observe only 80 to 90% of the space capacity available on each vehicle type. For example, if your truck has 10,000,000 cm3 of space, you can reduce that value to 9,000,000 cm3 to account for a 90% space efficiency.