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Optimization Approaches in the Strategic and Tactical Planning of Networks for Letter, Parcel and Freight Mail

  • Conference paper
Modeling for Decision Support in Network-Based Services

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 42))

Abstract

The increasing market competition and service focus of the customers forces logistics service providers such as e.g. postal organizations and express shipment companies to re-evaluate and to constantly improve their networks for letter, parcel and freight mail. The core service provided by postal companies is parcel and letter mail transportation and delivery. In this market segment there are two key efforts during the last few years: reduction in transportation and delivery time and minimization of costs under service quality constraints. We will analyse the structure of real world distribution networks for letter, parcel or freight mail and describe the respective subnetworks. We will introduce a general approach of heuristic decomposition of such distribution networks using cut-off times and time windows in order to model service quality requirements. Finally we will describe the models, optimization approaches and the implemented Decision Support Systems of three real world cases of subnetworks of distribution networks.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deutsche Post Chair of Optimization of Distribution Networks, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

    Hans-Jürgen Sebastian

Authors
  1. Hans-Jürgen Sebastian
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Sciences, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA

    Daniel Dolk

  2. Institute of Control and Computation Engineering, and National Institutute of Telecommunications, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland

    Janusz Granat

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Sebastian, HJ. (2012). Optimization Approaches in the Strategic and Tactical Planning of Networks for Letter, Parcel and Freight Mail. In: Dolk, D., Granat, J. (eds) Modeling for Decision Support in Network-Based Services. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 42. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27612-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27612-5_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-27611-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27612-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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