About ParaCutter
ParaCutter allows you to perform a runcut using automated runcutting tools.
- How many vehicles do I need on the street during each hour of the day in order to satisfy the trips that are likely to be requested?
- How do I minimize the amount of non-revenue service that exists simply to fulfill work rule obligations related to minimum run length, maximum spread time, and minimum percent straight shifts?
- What changes could I make to driver work rules regarding shift lengths that would have a favorable impact on payroll without affecting the amount of service I can deliver?
To address these issues, ParaCutter helps you allocate available resources throughout the day in the best possible way to meet your predicted service demand.
- Prospector
- Mines your historical service records in order to project your minimum vehicular
requirements in each time slot throughout the day.
Prospector allows you to research past schedules and identify representative service days that meet your target service level profile. It evaluates historical days not only for their aggregate demand but also for the representativeness of their demand profile throughout the service day. It then applies user-configurable heuristics to make adjustments for situations where the actual supply was either less or more than was needed.
ParaCutter makes extensive use of graphical tools to help you visualize every step of this analysis. It also allows you to make discretionary manual adjustments as needed.
- Jobs
- Takes the resulting raw supply requirements and combines them with user-definable
parameters of what constitutes legal vehicle runs and driver shifts.
Proven runcutting algorithms adapted from other sectors of the transportation industry then build vehicle runs and driver shifts based on this input combined with projected vehicle requirements for each time interval throughout the day.
Solutions can be optimized for various objectives such as minimum hours, drivers, and/or vehicles. It is also possible to impose constraints. For example, requiring that a specified percent of the runs match those of another day of the week.
When you run a job, the blocking and runcutting steps are iteratively solved in combination.
- Weekly Plans
- Allows you to combine runcuts for individual days of the week into a composite week.
Using tools in the weekly planner, you can rename runs to match existing PASS runs, adjust times for consistency from day to day, import weekly work into PASS as master runs with appropriate date intervals, manually put together weekly rosters so that drivers can bid, and assign drivers to work.
The end result is a recommended set of vehicle runs and driver shifts. The runcut may be viewed graphically or in tabular form. The results can also be loaded directly back into a test schedule in Trapeze PASS so that you can compare the impact of scheduling a day's worth of trips in the new runcut versus the current runcut.