PTV xServer allow you to plan and change clusters based on locations (customer addresses, postcode areas etc.). Common use cases are the management of field representatives, the planning of warehouse locations and their delivery areas as well as delivery planning. PTV xServer are designed for processing big amounts of data and therefore predestined for companies with an extensive field force and / or numerous locations to consider.
PTV xCLUSTER SERVER (Clustering of Territory)
Cluster planning offers a range of possibilities:
- Planning balanced clusters e.g. according to revenue potential, number of households.
- Creating territories, which are geographically compact, based on actual kilometres of road and travel times, to reduce travel time and maximize time with the customer.
- Quick simulation of various planning scenarios ("What would happen if" cases).
- Define daily, weekly or multi-week patterns
- Balance (total activity per territory): As far as possible, every territory should have the same activity measure in relation to the total of the activities in all clusters. Example: Every territory belonging to a sales representative has the same revenue volume. Or: every service technician has nearly the same service period as his colleagues in other clusters have.
- Contiguity and compactness (consideration of the distances): A planned territory should have a geometric shape that is as compact as possible. As a result, the travel time is minimised to the greatest extent possible. The ideal territory boundaries are those, which are as clear and smooth as possible.
- Cluster planning A predefined number of clusters are planned from scratch. This use case describes planning on greenfield sites, i.e. there are no existing territory centres to be taken into account.
- Location Assignment In this case, not only the locations are known but also the number and position of the territory centres. The aim is to create an even distribution of locations around individual territory centres, e.g. sales representative's offices.
- Change clusters Change an existing territory structure by altering the number of clusters while using all or some of the already set territory centres. Different clusters with new location assignments are created. This use case is helpful when a given structure is to be adapted to expansion or consolidation.
- Multiple visits You can split up all the customer calls scheduled e.g. for two weeks into ten clusters - one cluster per day trip. PTV xServer take into account call patterns within one week (e.g. Monday and Sunday) and call frequencies over weeks (e.g. 14 days).
- In some cases, it is important to consider relationships that should remain unaltered. It is possible to define existing unalterable assignments between territories and locations as well as to group locations prior to territory planning.
- This ensures e.g. that established relationships between customers (locations) and sales representatives (territory centres) will be kept. Grouping locations can be useful e.g., when customers with the same postcode should always be visited from the same field manager.
- PTV xServer use PTV‘s standard maps.
- PTV offers a wide range of regularly updated maps. For decades, PTV has worked closely with HERE, TomTom and AND - all leading suppliers of map data.
PTV xServer integrate with SAP applications through SAP Netweaver connector and other systems over standardised web service interfaces (XML, SOAP, JSON). They are scalable and actively support multi-processor systems.