Optimiser cost model
See what your plan costs,
and tell the optimiser what matters
A planning view on the Order Overview shows the numbers behind today's plan: distance, drive time, waiting, lateness and how the optimiser's cost is moving. Administrators can now set the costs that steer the optimiser themselves, for the whole organization, per driver, per vehicle and per workday.
Hi there,
"Why did the optimiser do that?" is one of the questions we hear most. The answer is almost always in the costs. This release puts them where you can see them and, if you're an administrator, change them.
The idea
Costs are how you steer the optimiser
The optimiser tries a very large number of ways to plan your day and keeps the one with the lowest total cost. "Cost" here is a score: an hour of driving costs something, an hour of waiting costs something, a late stop costs something, and so on. Add them up and the cheapest plan wins.
So the costs are how you tell it what you care about. Change the balance and it plans differently.
The optimiser will drive further, or use another vehicle, to arrive on time.
It is happy to let a driver wait for a delivery window to open instead of reshuffling the route.
It gives that vehicle the shorter routes and saves the long ones for cheaper vehicles.
It only puts that driver on the road when the others can't take the work.
If the costs don't match reality, the plans won't either. That is the most common reason a plan looks odd.
1 · Order Overview
The numbers behind today's plan
On the Order Overview, click the chart icon in the toolbar above the Gantt chart (Tactical planning view). A summary bar appears above the drivers, and every driver row gets a short line with the distance and time left and the estimated end of the day.
An illustration with made-up figures. The trend shows how the optimiser's cost moved since its last run. The dashed Optimiser button is only there for administrators.
Opens Plan totals, Late stops by type, the Optimiser cost trend over its recent runs and a table of Driver statistics you can sort by distance, drive, wait, lateness or utilisation.
For the curious, an advanced section splits the optimiser's cost into its parts, so you can see whether lateness, driving or something else weighs most.
Freeze the plan's statistics as a snapshot with a short description, for example "After tightening delivery windows".
Under Scenarios, tick two or more snapshots from the same date and click Compare. Pick a baseline, and every other column shows the difference.
The planning view is a personal switch, and your saved scenarios are kept in your browser. Turning it on changes nothing for your colleagues.
The optimiser's cost is the score it uses to compare plans. Use it to see whether a plan got better or worse, not as your actual cost for the day.
2 · For administrators
Set the cost model yourself
Until now, changing the optimiser's costs meant asking us. Administrators can now do it in the app. With the planning view on, click Optimiser in the summary bar. The settings are split over four tabs.
Organisation
The costs and rules for everyone, grouped in sections such as Time windows (late and early-arrival costs), Breaks, Work hours (work, overtime and after-work cost per hour), Priority and Constraints such as Allow late stops and Allow overtime. This is also where you choose the Cost mode.
Drivers
One row per driver: Priority, Delivery speed, Overtime, Include in optimiser and the driver's costs. Tick several drivers and set a value for all of them at once.
Vehicles
The same for vehicles: their costs, plus capacity and size such as Loading weight and Max travelling hours.
Workdays
Pick a day and adjust each driver's workday: start and end time, Manual skills for that day only, vehicles, start and end address, and whether the workday is Frozen.
The costs per driver and vehicle
Each driver and vehicle can carry these costs:
Time at a stop (loading, unloading) and time spent waiting for a window to open can now have their own hourly cost. Until you set them, they follow the travel-hour cost, so nothing changes until you decide it should.
The default. Rank each driver and vehicle from cheap to expensive on a 1–5 scale, and set once on the Organisation tab what each level is worth. Simplest to keep up to date.
Enter exact kroner per driver and vehicle. Most precise, but more to maintain. This mode adds the per-km cost on vehicles.
Switching mode doesn't convert your numbers: a "3" means level 3 in one mode and 3 kr in the other. Zendera asks you to confirm, and you should check the Drivers and Vehicles tabs afterwards.
Click Save changes and the optimiser uses the new values on its next run, within moments. Discard throws your edits away.
Each saved change is logged with who made it, when, and the old and new value. If a plan suddenly behaves differently, we can tell you what changed.
Who can open it: administrators. With permission groups, that means Organization settings at Full. If you're an administrator and don't see the Optimiser button, ask us to turn it on.
Looking for the small cards that tell you whether the optimiser planned your change? Those are Optimiser updates, a separate setting on your Account page.
Look at today's plan
Open the Order Overview and click the chart icon above the Gantt chart. Save a scenario now, and another after you change something, and compare the two.