Overview
Zaui provides you with a tool called Intelligent Equipment Assignment which offers an automatic way to enhance equipment assignment and reduce operational costs.
Previously, shared equipment could be managed in two ways:
- Traditional Shared Equipment Relationships where one or more child activities are shared with a parent activity that holds a single piece of equipment (ie - a bus). All bookings across all shared tours are pooled into a single-parent manifest.
- Common Equipment Pooling where Standard and Interval Activities are shared with a Rental parent activity in order to share individual pieces of equipment onto different activity-types.
What is Intelligent Equipment Assignment?
Intelligent Equipment Assignment takes Common Equipment Pooling further with a few notable differences:
- Tours are shared with a parent rental where the equipment has more than 1 capacity (ie - vehicles, busses, helicopters etc.).
- All customers on a booking that is made on parent rental or child tours are assigned to a single piece of equipment ( ie - A booking for 4 pax will be assigned to a single piece of equipment with a capacity of 4 or greater).
- Multiple bookings can be assigned to the same piece of equipment together if there is space allowing this and the bookings are:
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- For the same tour
- For the same start time
- For the same duration ( ie - Booking #10 for 4 pax is assigned to Equipment 1 (capacity of 6). Booking #11 for 2 pax is for the same tour at the same time so it can be assigned along with Booking #10 to Equipment 1. Booking #12 is for a different tour but on the same date at the same time - it cannot be assigned to Equipment 1).
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4. Bookings will be shuffled around whenever a new booking is created, edited or cancelled to maximize equipment usage according to a Best Fit Algorithm.
| Intelligent Equipment Assignment is only applicable to Rental Activities where equipment is assigned to the activity. |
What is the Best Fit Algorithm and how does it work?
The Best Fit Algorithm is logic that groups together bookings onto equipment that are for the same tour, date and time. If these conditions are identical, the system will try to schedule the bookings together onto as few pieces of equipment as possible in order to reduce operational costs.
As new bookings are made, edited and cancelled, the best-fit algorithm will shuffle the way the bookings are assigned to equipment in order to maximize the number of bookings that can be accepted while simultaneously minimizing the number of pieces of equipment used.
In the above example, we can see where the optimization has paired together bookings that are on the same tour, on the same date, and for identical times. Bat Man and Super Man are currently paired together on a piece of 4-seat equipment as they are for 2 guests each.
If we make a third booking for 2 pax for the same tour at the same time, all three bookings are reassigned to the 6-seat equipment as seen below.
Instead of putting Aqua Man (the 3rd booking) onto the second piece of equipment, the best-fit algorithm took into consideration the combined cost of having two pieces of equipment vs. one larger one and selected the more cost-effective option.
Enabling Intelligent Equipment Assignment
If you would like to enable Intelligent Equipment Assignment for your Rental activity, you will have to do it at the activity level.
- From the navigation bar, select Activities > Activity List
- Click on the Activity Name on which you wish to enable Intelligent Equipment Assignment.
- Scroll down to the Capacity and Equipment Assignment section where you can check the Enable Intelligent Equipment Assignment checkbox.
- By default, the checkbox will be unchecked, meaning each customer will always be assigned one piece of equipment and where no best-fit algorithm will run. Non-rental activities will not see the checkbox, however, child activities of a rental activity with this checkbox checked will also behave in the same way. They will also use the shared equipment pool of their parents (as before).
Additional Settings that will Impact Equipment Assignment
Equipment Operating Cost
This setting determines the ideal optimization based on the operational cost per hour of operation of a piece of equipment (ie - how much it costs to run a Helicopter).
- When you are creating your pieces of equipment, you can specify what their operating cost per hour is by going to Activities > Equipment > Equipment and either click on a piece of equipment already created or on Create Equipment from the shortcuts panel. This article will show you how to create equipment/equipment .
- By utilizing this function, the system will choose the most cost-effective piece of equipment that is available for the tour selected.
Maximum Equipment Usage
There is also a system-wide setting that will enable you to control how many pieces of equipment can operate at any time.
- From the navigation bar, select Settings > Company Info and scroll down to Bookings/Reservations - Rentals under the Zaui User Interface Settings.
- Select how many pieces of equipment you want to be made available.
- For example, if a company only has three pilots, only three helicopters can be in use at one time. Once the maximum is reached, additional equipment is considered unavailable until a tour ends and a vehicle becomes available again.
Locking a Booking to Equipment
A booking can be locked to a particular piece of equipment once it is confirmed. Once locked, the booking will not be shuffled by the Best Fit algorithm. If the vehicle has extra capacity, the extra seats can still be booked.
- From the dashboard (home page), pick a date and select the Rental activity you wish to book.
- On the next screen, click on Create Group Booking.
- A window will pop up where you can enter the details for this booking and select whether you would like the booking to be locked to this particular piece of equipment.
Making a Booking Private
If you would like a single booking to be the only one on a piece of equipment (for special occasions), you can make the booking private so that no other bookings can be added to that piece of equipment.
- From the dashboard (home page), pick a date and select the Rental activity you wish to book.
- On the next screen, click on Create Group Booking.
- A window will pop up where you can enter the details for this booking and select whether you would like the booking to be made private.
Intelligent Equipment Assignment Limitations
Due to the nature of the best fit algorithm, there are a few limitations on how bookings can be created:
- With Intelligent Equipment Assignment enabled, a single booking cannot be split across several pieces of equipment. In other words, a single booking can only have as many people as the capacity of a piece of equipment. For example, If I run helicopter tours and I have machines that can accommodate 4, 5 or 6 guests, the maximum size of a single booking is limited to 6. Groups larger than your equipment capacity will need to either make separate bookings or phone to book.
- Intelligent Equipment Assignment is not compatible with the back office booking option 'Create Group Booking'.
To make a booking, click on an individual row to select a specific piece of equipment for the booking.