A delivery segment is defined to be any two consecutive DELIVERY stops in a route. (A route or load with only a single DELIVERY stop has no delivery segments.)
The optimiser can optionally apply a penalty based on the delivery segments in a route. This penalty has two components: a fixed component based on the number of delivery segments in the route and a variable component proportional to the transit distance along the delivery segments. These penalties take the form of an additional hidden cost.
The delivery segment penalty is useful for “shaping” the route. The fixed component of the penalty may be used to reduce the number of delivery stops per load, while the variable component may be used to encourage the optimiser to cluster deliveries more closely together.
The delivery segment penalty is only applied if the Batched loads parameter is enabled.