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Design, Operations, & Production Systems Lab (DeOPSys) |
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MA.D.RE.L (Management of Dynamic Requests in Logistic Services)
Project Duration
18 months (September 2006 – March 2008)
Project Partners
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DeOPSys Lab, Financial & Management Engineering, Aegean University
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G4S Telematix – Informatic and telematic systems implemetation company
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Planning S.A. – Management Consultants,
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ELTA-Courier
Funding
This project is funded by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology (G.S.R.T), implemented under the Attiki Regional Operational Programme (ROP).
1. Scope
The need for higher customer service and minimization of operational costs has led many courier operators to seek innovative information systems for efficient handling of customer requests that occur either during the planning and/or the execution of daily deliveries. In a courier service environment, efficient delivery is the key issue for customer satisfaction. The use of manual or empirical techniques for customer allocation to delivery vehicles, although necessary, is by no means sufficient to address customer requests that are likely to occur during delivery planning or execution due to randomness and complexity. A non-optimized vehicle allocation plan may have negative effects on delivery performance leading thus, to higher costs and inferior customer service. To this end, the main scope of this project is the management of pick-up and delivery customer requests for the courier sector. More specifically, this project aims at the design and implementation of an intelligent fleet management system, that incorporates two innovative event management mechanisms, a) a dynamic request handler, which handles dynamically new events that arrive during the execution of a planned schedule by re-optimizing the initial vehicle routing solution, and b) the routing of planned deliveries in a multi-day framework, which routes the vehicles for a N-day horizon in order to decide upon the optimal request allocation.
2. Approach
The methodological approach of the MADREL project can be summarized as follows:
- Requirements analysis and definition of weaknesses in the dynamic requests’ handling and routing procedures
- Development of a new real-time decision support/making method (dynamic routing algorithm) in order to manage the dynamic customer requests.
- Development of a new decision support mechanism (routing - allocation algorithm) for the bulk deliveries management in a rolling horizon framework.
- Design of the Dynamic Requests Management System
- Development of an integrated platform, incorporating telematics and fleet management tools that support the aforementioned algorithms
- Implementation and Evaluation of the aforementioned algorithms and systems in real industry situations.
3. Results
The results of the MADREL project can be summarized as follows:
- Better understanding of the courier sector logistics operations (with emphasis on vehicle routing)
- Development of OR algorithms for tackling practical routing problems
- Development of an intelligent platform/system that incorporates two innovative event management mechanisms, a) a dynamic request handler, and b) the routing of planned deliveries in a multi-day framework
- Increase of delivery efficiency (when the platform was used in pilot tests)
- Dissemination of results to transport stakeholders and the academia
Projects:
Τhe Design, Operations, and Production Systems Lab is “knowledge Partner” of the Green Freight Europe Initiative.