Postal services and especially courier services environment consists one of the most developing business sectors in the urban transport services. Main characteristics of these services are the increased complexity in transport planning and execution, as well as the provision of high quality services to the customers. Courier companies deal with a varying and large number of customers that need to be served each day and, therefore, planning and execution of routes consists one of the most crucial logistics operations. The operational cost of planning and execution of routes and quality of the provided services is significantly affected by the human factor. Consequently, the development and use of an integrated learning program for postal and courier personnel seems to be vital, in order for the courier companies to adopt best practices and methods for the planning, execution and monitoring of the transportation work, aiming at the further training of the personnel and as a result the improvement of customer service. To this end the COURIEL project is addressed to courier services employees who are involved in the task of routing planning (coordinators) and execution (postmen) and it includes the development of an innovative training application- in the form of a "simulation" game- through which the employees will be trained at the handling of their route- scheduled and dynamic/ ad hoc itineraries (through appropriate scenarios)- and will assimilate the methodologies of best routing and evaluation of their performance.

 

The methodological approach of the COURIEL project can be summarized as follows:

 

The results of the COURIEL project can be summarized as follows: