Missionary Transfer Travel Plan Generator

So you have the BIG idea that the Church or community needs to develop. Discuss that idea here. Maybe you just want to make a suggestion on a new forum topic. Let us know.
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tje633
New Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 10:48 am

Missionary Transfer Travel Plan Generator

#1

Post by tje633 »

The idea would be a program that would run through all the different possible travel plans for all of the missionaries in the mission and pick the one that is most efficient in terms of time, cost of tickets, and in making sure that every missionary always has a companion with them. Keeping in mind that some missionaries are sisters and some are elders and the two can't be missionary companions. Factoring in the areas that have access to a car and how many people and luggage that car could carry. Choosing who gets to ride in the car and who has to take a train and determining where the missionaries will meet up at each stage of the travelling process. A program like this would make transfer week much smoother and if it saves one mission money then if applied in all the missions around the world then it could save the church quite a bit of money and save the missionaries a lot of time.

I can imagine it may be quite a complex program but if possible it could go so much further in depth as well as to automatically updating the train ticket costs through their website or fuel prices as they rise or fall.
wertdl
Church Employee
Church Employee
Posts: 104
Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 5:45 pm

#2

Post by wertdl »

What mission do you serve in? While your idea is great, it may not be applicable to the rest of the world. I served in Boise, and we only did transfers via van. I know other missions in the US have "transfer meetings", where every one drives in, meets their new companions, and leaves.
tje633
New Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 10:48 am

#3

Post by tje633 »

I'm serving in the England London South Mission, we usually do something similar to the transfer meetings where everyone drives to the temple and then drives back to their areas but some people can be switched and transferred easier by not going to the temple. The program would have to be something that you could customize in order for it to be applicable to the rest of the world. You could have a place to assign which areas in the mission have cars, trains, buses to where, etc. Prices for each of them. And also have a preference section where you could choose between the missions that would rather use a fixed meeting point that they choose, or if they would rather do van runs, etc. With customization options and preferences it should be able to be applicable to all missions world wide, however, it would be quite an extensive project. I don't know if it would be possible in the near future to have one that would be standard for every mission of if each mission would have to make their own.
mevans
Senior Member
Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

#4

Post by mevans »

My mission covered a large geographic area. I had transfers that were like this: 1) several hour bus ride; 2) spend the night; 3) several hour plane flight; 4) several hour bus ride. The mission boundaries have shrunk a little since then, but it's still a very real situation. I'm not sure how many missions have these kind of travel requirements, but my completely uneducated guess is that it's a minority and therefore creating such a solution may not be cost effective for the missionary department unless it's a trivial modification to the existing transfer planning software I've seen mentioned.
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