Plan routes to optimize deliveries

Farm Collective in Canterbury, New Zealand, offers a community supported agriculture (CSA) program to deliver fresh produce directly to customers. Farm Collective's CSA program is rapidly growing and the business requires help in planning its produce deliveries. The routing functionality in Map Viewer uses the ArcGIS Routing service to find the most efficient routes for multiple vehicles based on constraints like travel capacity and stop duration. In this tutorial, you'll use the Plan Routes tool to optimize the CSA deliveries for a fleet of drivers.

This tutorial was last tested on March 17, 2025.

Requirements

• ArcGIS organizational account with a Publisher, Facilitator, or Administrator role (see options for software access)
• 9 credits

Add the data to a map

First, you'll create a map using data from ArcGIS Online that contains the locations of the CSA box deliveries.

1. Sign in to your ArcGIS organizational account or into ArcGIS Enterprise using a named user account.

   Note:

   If you don't have an organizational account, see options for software access.

2. On the ribbon, click the Map tab.

   Note:

   Depending on your organizational and user settings, you may have opened Map Viewer Classic. ArcGIS Online offers two map viewers for viewing, using, and creating maps. For more information on the map viewers available and which to use, please see this FAQ.

   This tutorial uses Map Viewer.

3. In the Layers pane, click Add.

   

   The Add layer pane appears, showing data from My content. Because the layer you want isn't in your account, you'll change the search location to ArcGIS Online.

4. Click My content and choose ArcGIS Online.

   

5. In the Search box, type ProduceCustomers owner:Esri_Tutorials.

   

   This dataset is a hosted feature layer showing addresses in and around Christchurch, New Zealand.

   Note:

   This data is fictitious. It has been created for the purpose of demonstrating the workflow in this tutorial. It is designed to look plausible for the workflow and is structured similarly to data that you might use in this situation, but due to the legal limitations on sharing real data of this type, it is entirely made up. Do not rely upon this data. Do not attempt to draw conclusions or make real-world decisions based on this data. Do not use this data to train AI or ML models; the results will be inaccurate. The addresses in this dataset are real addresses to provide plausible data to work with, but the data has no real relation to these addresses. Any names or attribute values associated with these addresses in the datasets are made up and have nothing to do with any actual persons or conditions at these locations.

6. Click Add.

   

   A layer is added to the map, showing the addresses of CSA customers.

   

   Next, you'll create a sketch layer representing Farm Collective's processing barn.

7. On the toolbar on the map, click the Search button.

   

8. In the Search box, type 5110 Arundel Rakaia Gorge Road.

   The address 5110 Arundel Rakaia Gorge Road, Alford Forest, Mount Somers, Canterbury, 7771, NZL appears in the drop-down menu.

   Note:

   This address was chosen to look plausible for the workflow. Any names or attribute values associated with this address are made up and have nothing to do with any actual persons or conditions at this location.

9. Click the address in the search results.

   

   The map zooms to the specified address.

   

10. On the Search result pop-up, click Add to new sketch.

    

    The Sketch pane appears and a sketch layer is created with a point for 5110 Arundel Rakaia Gorge Road. The point for the processing barn was already created, so you can close the Sketch pane.

11. Close the Sketch pane. Optionally, zoom back out on the map to see the rest of the data.

    

12. For the ProduceCustomers layer, click Options and choose Zoom to.

    

    The map extent zooms to the ProduceCustomer layer. Next, you'll save the map.

13. On the Contents (dark) toolbar, click Save and open and choose Save as.

    

    Tip:

    If the Contents toolbar is collapsed by default, you can expand it by clicking the Expand button at the bottom of the toolbar. If it is expanded and you would prefer it to be collapsed, you can click the Collapse button. The example images will show the expanded toolbar, but you can proceed with whichever you prefer.

14. In the Save map window, provide the following information:
    • For Title, type CSA Delivery Routes.
    • For Tags, type CSA, deliveries, Plan Routes, and New Zealand, pressing Enter between each tag.
    • For Summary, type Routes for CSA deliveries in Christchurch, New Zealand.
15. Click Save.

    You have added the customers layer from ArcGIS Online, created a sketch to represent the farm, and save the map to your account. Next, you'll create the routes for multiple drivers.

Plan the routes

You're ready to create the routes sketch layer to the customer locations. Your analysis will assign customers to drivers and output the best routes for the deliveries.

1. On the Settings (light) toolbar, click Analysis.

   

2. In the Analysis pane, click Tools.

   

3. In the search bar, type routes.

   The Plan Routes tool is the only tool listed.

4. Click Plan Routes.

   

   The Plan Routes tool pane appears.

5. In the Input layers section, set the following parameters:
   • For Start layer, click Layer. In the Select layer window, choose Sketch (Points).
   • For Intermediate stops layer, click Layer and choose ProduceCustomers.

   The input layers both show a count of features. The Sketch (Points) layer has one feature and the ProduceCustomers layer has 483 features. The sketch layer will serve as the start and end point for the routes.

6. Confirm that Return to start is enabled.

   When enabled, the routes will return to the start location.

   

   Next, you'll set the analysis parameters for the tool.

7. Scroll down to the Analysis settings section.
8. For Travel mode, if necessary, choose Driving Time.

   

   The routes will follow the road network and obey laws for cars, such as speed limits and one-way streets. At Farm Collective, the drivers do their deliveries on Monday nights, so customers will have their produce boxes in the morning.

9. For Departure time, set the date to the next Monday on the calendar. Set the time to 9:00 PM.

   

   The Plan Routes tool will use historic traffic data to create routes for typical traffic conditions on Mondays at 9:00 PM.

   Farm Collective has nine delivery trucks and drivers. You'll set the maximum number of routes so there aren't more routes created than drivers available.

10. For Max number of vehicles to route, type 9 or use the up arrow to set the value to 9.

    Each of the trucks can hold a maximum of 60 produce boxes. You'll use that number as the maximum number of stops per truck.

11. For Maximum number of stops per vehicle, type 60.

    The drivers estimate that each stop takes an average of two minutes to get out of the truck, pick up a produce box from the back, and leave the box at the customer's door.

12. For Time spent at each stop (minutes), type 2.

    The drivers work 8-hour shifts, or 480 minutes. This is also the default maximum time per vehicle in the tool settings.

13. Confirm that Limit max time per vehicle is enabled and Max time per vehicle (minutes) is set to 480.

    

    You will set the parameters for the result layer before running the tool.

14. For Output name, type CSA delivery routes and add your name or initials to ensure the name is unique within your organization.

    You can also create route layers for the result. Route layers include assigned stops and directions for the routes, and can be shared with the drivers and used in the ArcGIS Navigator app.

15. Check Include route layers.

    

    Before you run the analysis, you'll estimate the number of credits it will consume. Credits are the currency used across ArcGIS and are consumed during analysis.

16. Click Estimate credits.

    Note:

    The Estimate credits button is not available for ArcGIS Enterprise. If your ArcGIS Enterprise organization is configured to use the ArcGIS Routing service, credits will be consumed from the ArcGIS Online organization from which the service originates.

    The tool is estimated to consume nine credits, which corresponds to the number of routes being created.

    

17. Click Run.

    The tool runs. You can watch the progress of the tool run on the History tab.

18. Click History.

    

    When the tool completes, the result includes nine routes and the CSA customer locations that are each assigned to a route.

    

Explore the results

Now that you have created the routes, you'll explore the data.

1. In the Layers pane, expand the CSA delivery routes layer to view the sublayers.

   

   The CSA delivery routes layer contains two sublayers, Assigned Stops and Routes. The stops include the produce customers that you added from ArcGIS Online and the routes are for multiple vehicles from the sketch location that you added to represent the farm. Each sublayer contains attributes specific to those features.

2. On the map, zoom in and click a route to open its pop-up.

   

   The pop-up displays information such as the stop count for the route, total time, total distance, and more.

3. On the map, click a stop to view its pop-up.

   

   Here, you can see the various attributes for the stops, such as travel times to and from previous stops, arrival and departure times, and more.

4. Close the pop-up.

   The route layer is saved in your ArcGIS Online account. The delivery drivers can download ArcGIS Navigator on their mobile device, add a map for New Zealand, and add the routes layer. Navigator will then guide the driver to and from each stop along the route. The following example image shows the routes layer in ArcGIS Navigator on a mobile device.

   

5. Save your map.

In this tutorial, you generated optimized routes to deliver CSA boxes to customers in Christchurch, New Zealand. First, you added data to the map and created a sketch layer representing the produce processing location. Then, you ran the Plan Routes tool to create routes for nine delivery trucks using settings for the number of produce boxes that can be carried by each truck and the length of the drivers' workdays. The resulting layer could be added to the ArcGIS Navigator mobile app to navigate the drivers to and from all the stops on each route.

You can find more tutorials in the tutorial gallery.

Acknowledgements

• The customer and processing barn data used in the tutorial is fictitious.
• Topographic map sources: Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community