User guide¶

This guide describes how to use FastVRP to solve your vehicle routing problems efficiently. To learn more about interacting with the API specifically, have a look at the quickstart.

Introduction¶

FastVRP is a route optimisation API for solving vehicle routing problems (VRPs), such as last-mile delivery, home healthcare, waste collection, and more. The overarching goal of a VRP is to determine a set of vehicle routes to fulfil all (or some) transportation tasks at the lowest possible cost, while respecting business constraints such as time windows, vehicle capacities, and shift constraints.

FastVRP is built on the state-of-the-art VRP solver PyVRP using techniques from the latest research advancements. In addition, FastVRP provides an easy-to-use interface that is compatible with the ISO 8601 standard, and directly integrates with map data from OpenStreetMap, allowing you to solve your routing problems faster.

Problem data¶

The three components that define a VRP data instance are:

• Tasks: Routing tasks that involve delivering goods from a depot, and/or picking up goods to return to the depot. Tasks can have (multiple) time windows, arbitrary delivery and pickup amounts, a service duration and a release time.
• Depots: Locations where vehicles can start, end, or reload. Depots can have time windows and a load duration.
• Vehicle types: Collections of vehicles sharing the same attributes, which include shifts, capacities and reload configurations.

More details on the problem data components can be found in the API reference.

Map data¶

After specifying a complete problem data instance, FastVRP obtains distances and travel times between all specified locations. These are calculated using the Open Source Routing Machine with OpenStreetMap data, providing realistic travel times based on actual road networks.

Objective¶

FastVRP optimises solutions in two stages. The first objective is to maximise the number of planned tasks. This is useful in scenarios where the available vehicles cannot complete all tasks. The secondary objective is to minimise the operational costs. These include distance, duration, and fixed vehicle costs, which can be configured separately for each vehicle type.

Solution¶

A solution determines the following:

• Which tasks to plan
• Which vehicles to use
• The assignment of tasks to vehicles
• The sequence of route stops of each vehicle

More details on the solution can be found in the API reference.

Trial use¶

New accounts start in trial mode with full access to FastVRP and its API. The trial includes a limit of 1,000 total tasks across all jobs, allowing you to test and evaluate FastVRP. If you need higher limits to evaluate FastVRP, just contact us and we can increase your usage limits.

Pricing¶

FastVRP has a usage-based pricing model of €0.03 per task. For high-volume needs, reach out to us for customised pricing tailored to your scale and requirements.