Patent ID: 7676404

Claim:
A scheduling and routing system implemented on a processor, said system including an application program that is implemented on said processor for use in calculating delivery routes for delivering a consumable to customers via commercial delivery vehicles, comprising: a delivery forecasting system implemented on said processor that consumption matches certain customers to other customers with similar attributes and that forecasts from the delivery profiles of the other customers with similar attributes and/or historical profiles of deliveries to said certain customers, when each said certain customer is anticipated to run out of inventory of the consumable; an integrated inventory replenishment, scheduling and routing system implemented on said processor that generates a delivery route for a commercial delivery vehicle that prioritizes customers for delivery of said consumable based on risk of inventory depletion before delivery of more inventory of the consumable, said delivery route being generated based on (a) said forecasts and (b) variable parameters including road routing economics of making several deliveries in sequence to a plurality of said customers before replenishment of the commercial delivery vehicle; and a cost trade-off function implemented on said processor that reflects the trade-off between the cost of delivery of the consumable and the cost associated with the risk of running out of the consumable on any given day, whereby a minimum of said cost trade-off function is used by said integrated inventory replenishment, scheduling and routing system as a criterion for selecting a day for customer delivery, said processor further calculating within a routing horizon for each customer a range of allowable days for delivery of the consumable, said range of allowable days being defined as a set of contiguous days within which the cost trade-off function values fall within a given tolerance of an optimal value.