Greenplan joins Route Planning Elite

Another success for Greenplan: the EPG (Ehrhardt Partner Group) route planning solution has been included in the 2023 Gartner Market Guide for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling after just two years on the market. This milestone places Greenplan at the forefront of global route planning and execution systems. Its inclusion underscores the fact that Greenplan achieves great success thanks to its focus on users’ needs. Instead of being based on artificial intelligence, Greenplan uses the principles of discrete mathematics. This allows dispatchers to organize and manage their daily routing planning more efficiently based on their own individual experience and know-how.

With Greenplan, companies can already carry out efficient, sustainable route planning today. Customers demonstrably reduce kilometres, vehicles, and circuits, and typically bring about increases in efficiency of 10-30% compared to their previous route planning solution. Inclusion in the Market Guide for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling produced by the international research company Gartner is a further affirmation of how Greenplan has managed to gain a foothold on the global market. You will find the full report available for download at Download VRS Report.

A single solution for everything: Planning and managing routes

Greenplan allows ambitious dispatchers to plan and manage their routes optimally with the greatest possible efficiency. Clients set out their own individual requirements to ensure this is the case. The Greenplan tool can then be adapted to these requirements. Greenplan offers three solutions for this purpose in its product line. Greenplan Engine is the highly efficient algorithm, providing the basis for calculating the best possible routes. The solution is easy to integrate into all customary transport management systems. Greenplan Planning is based on the engine, offering not only planning but also the individual modelling of routes. This provides optimized route planning for the coming day during daily business activities. It also furnishes monthly or quarterly planning for skeleton circuits, or the strategic, long-term calculation of routes with simultaneous user rule checks, depending on the transportation management system used. It also allows easy adjustments to routes during day-to-day operations. Greenplan Execution can be used to monitor and manage how routes are implemented. This means it is easy to add new orders to a plan and amend the stop sequences or time window restrictions. What’s more, Greenplan Execution can be effortlessly extended to include the EPG ONE app. As part of delivery, digital delivery receipts can be created for proof of delivery using the driver app, which can display the ETA or provide individual time tracking, for example.

Artificial intelligence vs. dispatcher’s intelligence

Greenplan is conclusive proof that dispatchers continue to play a decisive role in route and circuit planning. “Artificial intelligence offers enormous benefits in many areas when the software learns over time what a “good” solution is and thus acquires human intelligence to a certain extent,” explains Clemens Beckmann, Greenplan CEO. “However, applying this logic to the complex field of circuit and route planning proves to be extremely difficult in many cases. This is because circuit planning depends on circumstances which change on a daily basis and can even change completely if a few new orders are added. Moreover, it is also not a good idea to learn from historical data when there is no clear metric for the quality of an individual solution in this case. There are also numerous special situations, such as road restrictions or special requirements for a delivery, which would be difficult for a software to learn quickly. That is why we rely on the logics of advanced mathematics for Greenplan and can thus fulfil the dispatchers’ individual requirements precisely.”

Dispatchers need a tool that they can use to plan and manage their routes efficiently to an optimum degree. For example, the routes planned by Greenplan do not need to be rectified since the tool already considers the dispatcher’s requirements if they have codified them. Greenplan thus systematically follows the dispatcher’s planning intelligence rather than relying on AI randomness, having internalized the underlying rule.

“In our experience, dispatchers like to understand why a route is planned as it is. With systematic algorithmic planning, this situation can largely be deduced and explained easily. This is not possible in the case of an AI-based route planning system. As far as we can see, AI is unable to provide an effective solution for tour and route planning. Good deterministic algorithms are much better suited for this purpose and cause less stress for dispatchers. Greenplan is a good instrument for an ambitious dispatcher,” adds Beckmann.