CPEL Redesigns Its Land Express Network

The China Postal Express and Logistics Corporation CPEL, China’s largest corporation in the express delivery industry, is restructuring its nationwide land express network after completing its reorganization. In this redesign project, we proposed a network design framework and developed a decision support system MMHHSNDDSS to integrate and optimize the topology structure and functional configuration of CPEL’s intermodal and multilayered network. Our model seeks to minimize operations and investment costs, constrained by the delivery time limits of CPEL’s service products. Using MMHHSNDDSS, CPEL’s senior management team can determine the optimal network by incorporating soft constraints, such as the experience of CPEL’s decision makers, into a series of solutions. According to an evaluation based on data gathered in 2009, CPEL expects the new network to improve service levels and provide savings of more than 20 percent in annual operations costs. The implementation of our proposed solution began in 2010. In addition, the quantitative methods applied in this project have changed the company’s attitude toward applying operations research methods to strategic decision-making processes.