Strategic Redesign of Urban Mail and Parcel Networks at La Poste

Matthias Winkenbach (), Alain Roset () and Stefan Spinler ()
Additional contact information
Matthias Winkenbach: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Alain Roset: La Poste, F-75014 Paris, France
Stefan Spinler: WHU—Otto Beisheim School of Management, D-56179 Vallendar, Germany

Interfaces, 2016, vol. 46, issue 5, 445-458

Abstract: We discuss our development of a decision model that allows La Poste, the French national postal operator, to assess the cost benefits of merging the urban mail and parcel delivery networks, which were run previously as separate entities. Our model, based on a mixed-integer linear program, derives the optimal network structure, including direct delivery, indirect delivery, or a hybrid structure, and provides an approximation of its routing cost. This approach allows us to model realistic large-scale problems. Based on data from the French city of Nantes, we find that merging the mail and parcel delivery networks yields cost benefits of approximately three percent, an amount that proves to be robust under various scenarios we tested. These findings corroborated La Poste management’s expectations of potential cost savings and led to management’s decision to create a new organizational structure in which local managers are responsible for the urban delivery of domestic mail and parcel.

Keywords: mail and parcel delivery networks; location-routing model; mixed-integer linear program; scenario analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.2016.0854 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:46:y:2016:i:5:p:445-458

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Interfaces from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().