• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.282-289
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• 2007

While demands for express couriers service are rapidly increasing due to recent progress of electronic commerce, express courier service companies are struggling to take a larger market share through ongoing improvement in their service processes. Cut-off time is the time limit that all orders delivered before the limit are guaranteed for the delivery within the very next day. Extending cut-off time for express service centers can provide the express company with increase of total sales, but it may also cause increasing the possibility not to satisfy customer needs due to work delay in the consolidation terminal. We develop a design model for express courier service network based on a recursive optimization/simulation procedure. With the optimization model, we seek key design parameters such as the cut-off time for express service centers and the capacity of the consolidation terminal maximizing total sales profit while satisfying the desired level of performances. With the simulation model, we consider the dynamic nature of the network and obtain relationships between the design parameters and the performance measures with the multiple linear regression. The validity of the model is examined with an example.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.304-310
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• 2011

The express courier business in Korea has been recognized as one of promising business sectors with the annual growth rate of over 10 percent since 2001. As such many domestic and foreign companies have been established and are fiercely competing to extend their own market share. The severe competition has forced them to focus on achieving cost competitiveness and high level of customer service. Small and medium-sized enterprises( SMEs) with relatively poor network infrastructure in particular are facing tougher challenges to cost reduction and efficiency improvement in their logistics networks. Strategic alliances among SMEs may be an effective way to cope with these challenges. Therefore this study proposes an integer programming model for compromised network design and its solution procedure based on maxmin and maxsum criteria for strategic alliances. The applicability and efficiency of the proposed model are demonstrated through an illustrative numerical example.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.80-87
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• 2010

As express courier market expands rapidly, companies are exposed to fierce competition. To cope with struggle for their survival, they are continuously making efforts to improve their service system. Even if most of service centers are directly linked to a consolidation terminal in courier service network, some of them with regional disadvantages are operated in milk run type from/to the consolidation terminal, which is a traditional PDP (Pick-up and Delivery Problem). This study suggests an approach to solve the PDP with the objective of maximizing the incremental profit, which belongs to PTP (Profitable Tour Problem) class. After the PTP is converted to TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem) with the same objective, a heuristic algorithm based on GA (Genetic Algorithm) is developed and examined through an example problem in practice of a courier service company in Korea.