Client Situation

The increasing expectations for faster response and enhanced flexibility in urban distribution, delivery and pick up operations, have prompted leading retailers and service providers in Europe to seek dynamic planning/routing and management solutions. Our team members have contributed to the development of such methods and systems that provide a clear competitive advantage to time-sensitive operational environments.

The way to problem solving

Our approach in addressing such complex, high performing environments in urban logistics comprised the following steps:

• Based on the client's commercial and service vision, the related operational objectives, as well as the characteristics of the business environment, we jointly defined the service specifications, the new business model, the business processes, and the related performance expectations
• Surveyed the market for advanced commercial systems that satisfy the service specifications, identified gaps, and developed the integrated architecture to fully address these specifications. The architecture comprises robust available planning and monitoring/management software and hardware solutions, as well as novel advanced applications to be developed to satisfy niche aspects of the offering
• Developed the mathematical formulations of the new operational problems and methods/algorithms to solve them in an efficient, near optimal manner. The related problems included dynamic routing, and optimization of mass delivery services
• Integrated the above to the proposed system architecture, and performed extensive pilot testing to improve and streamline operations
• Developed the new organisation to implement the proposed processes, as well as the related performance management tools (KPIs and reporting).

Impact

Our staff contributed to the development of an integrated system, processes, organization, and performance management tools to plan and monitor novel, fast and more responsive urban distribution, delivery and pick up services that provide a clear competitive advantages to our clients in a niche business environment.

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