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Deutsche Post DHL Group has signed an agreement with current management team to divest Greenplan GmbH, a route planning solution provider owned by DHL.

Greenplan's unique software solution enables route optimization with significant cost, time and CO2 savings for delivery and maintenance organizations worldwide.

The divestment will further accelerate the successful development of Greenplan.

Deutsche Post DHL Group has announced the divestment of Greenplan GmbH, a DHL owned route planning solution provider, to current management team through a management buyout (MBO). Dr. Clemens Beckmann, CEO of Greenplan, has led the acquisition together with Florian Merget, former Head of Strategy and Business Development at Greenplan and now Co-owner with a 25% share and Managing Director of Greenplan GmbH. They will continue to manage and strategically develop Greenplan's business of cloud-based, dynamic route optimization. Greenplan provides an attractive solution for national and international logistics companies to improve business performance and customer satisfaction in an environment-friendly way.

"The commitment by Dr. Clemens Beckmann and Florian Merget to invest in and further develop the Greenplan solution, marks an important step in the successful growth story of Greenplan. With the management buyout the team will now accelerate the growth of that unique route planning solution provider", says Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer at DHL. "Smart route planning, based on a powerful algorithm, helps forwarders and customers with large fleets to optimize the utilization of their vehicles, to improve route planning, and ultimately reduce CO2 emissions by driving fewer kilometers."

"Greenplan, having its roots in the world's leading logistics company DHL and the renowned Mathematical Institute of the University of Bonn, Germany, has created a superior solution to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs of the transport industry, and making a big impact in fighting climate change", says Dr. Clemens Beckmann, CEO of Greenplan. "Together with the team we have the right industry knowledge, skill set and expertise needed to capture the global business opportunity. We are enthusiastic about this opportunity to drive the growth of Greenplan together as a team." 

"Tech company Greenplan started off as a research cooperation between DHL and the Mathematical Institute of the University of Bonn in 2016, initially being a research project to optimize transportation and route planning for the world-leading logistics company DHL", Florian Merget says. "In the last years, Greenplan successfully expanded its customer base, solutions and won blue-chip external clients for its algorithm. We are confident that we can release our full potential going forward and grow into new markets. We are convinced that Greenplan has an excellent future."

With the transaction Deutsche Post DHL Group is following its commitment to focus on its core business of transportation and logistics services; as Deutsche Post DHL does not consider the commercial scale-up of software start-ups to be a core activity. The new management will now lead the global scale-up of the business and further development of the algorithm, while DHL is looking forward to remain an important long-term customer.

Management Buyout

Management team acquires DHL's route planning tool Greenplan through a Management Buyout

Greenplan CEO Dr. Clemens Beckmann stresses the importance of smart tour planning solutions for more efficient deliveries

The September issue of Parcel and Postal Technology International magazine features leading industry frontrunners on the power of tour optimization. A brand new Sustainability Special Report explains how smart algorithms support dispatchers in their daily work and help providers to come up with greener deliveries. Among other industry experts, Greenplan CEO Dr. Clemens Beckmann also finds mention explaining why new tour planning approaches were needed. According to Dr. Beckmann more efficient planning leads to a better use of resources and improves sustainability by reducing CO2-emissions: "This is a low-margin business and the cost pressure is very high, so efficiency is really key."

About Parcel and Postal Technology International magazine

Parcel and Postal Technology International is a leading magazine in the postal technology sector. The publication covers all the latest developments, trends and challenges in the industry including new investments in sorting hubs, delivery vehicles and digital platforms.

Green Lanes: New sustainability report about the power of tour planning algorithms

Supply Chain Management Startups Handbook 2021

Greenplan is listed in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) Startups Handbook 2021

This week the new SCM Startups Handbuch 2021 has been published. With the book, publisher Matthias Bosse offers a good overview of young and innovative companies in the field of the supply chain. In addition to meaningful company profiles, the handbook serves as a professional guide for industry experts and venture capitalists interested in supply chain and logistics innovations.

Compilation of more than 200 companies from 27 countries 

In total, the book includes 215 company profiles of startups or scale-ups from 27 European countries. The profiles include detailed product descriptions, feature overviews, and contact details. In addition, the so-called "SCM Startups Navigator" sorts all providers along with the corresponding market segments. This makes it possible to find the right provider for every application right away. 

Leading industry experts comment on innovations in the supply chain sector

In addition to the company profiles, the reader also gains an exciting insight into current logistics trends. 10 "Supply Chain" experts from well-known companies such as McKinsey, EY, IBM, DHL Consulting, or Fiege Logistics comment in detail on topics such as artificial intelligence, "Circular Economy", sustainability, "Internet of Things" and real-time monitoring.

Greenplan in Supply Chain Management Startups Handbook 2021

Amazon's official press release

In early 2021, Amazon launched the Amazon Last Mile Routing Research Challenge in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Transportation & Logistics. The competition aimed at optimized last-mile package delivery planning.

Despite enormous progress in tour optimization in recent years, there is still a noticeable gap between theoretical optimization and the actual implementation of tours. Particularly, in practice driver knowledge still primarily determines the course of a tour. The competition organized by Amazon, therefore, aimed to investigate how algorithms can learn the knowledge of experienced delivery and use these information for optimized last-mile delivery.

The mathematical approach to the problem is a new variant of the well-known Travelling Salesman Problem. This involves finding the shortest route through a large number of cities or parcel addresses. Whether efficient algorithms can be used for this problem or not directly relates to the "Millenium Problem P vs. NP".

Stephan Held, a member of the Greenplan research team, and his team find the most efficient results

Professor Dr. Stephan Held of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics and a member of the Greenplan development team at the University of Bonn participated in this year's competition among 2,285 attendees. Together with his teammates Keld Helsgaun (Denmark) and William Cook (Canada), he tried to solve the problem by further developing known combinatorial local search algorithms - with success. Stephan Held's team presented 42% better results than the runners-up from MIT. This exceptional achievement was rewarded with $100,000 in prize money.  

The team recognized a two-level hierarchical cluster structure in the driven tours, which leads to a new variant of the Traveling Salesperson Problem. They also extracted so-called sequence constraints between clusters from a known tour with a similar cluster structure. Such sequence constraints define, for example, that cluster A should be approached before B and C. This resulted in new disjunctive sequence constraints stating that clusters must be visited either in the order A, B, C, or in the order B, C, A.

Machine learning is not the preferred solution 

Interestingly, machine learning was not the preferred solution approach of the participants. Only 35% of all participating teams used machine learning techniques to solve the problem. According to Held, machine learning has not yet played a major role in combinatorial optimization problems such as the classical TSP, although much research on this topic is increasing. 

Held comments on his own approach as follows: "The hype around machine learning means that nowadays one almost has to justify not using these methods in discrete optimization. For me, a key motivation was to demonstrate the strengths of optimization algorithms, especially in a machine learning competition, which is based on a combinatorial optimization problem." 

The mathematician suspects that combinatorial algorithms (like Greenplan) will continue to be the future for route planning and optimization - possibly in combination with machine learning algorithms. 

A total of 220 teams from 22 countries participated in the competition. 45 teams made it to the final round.

Read the official press release from the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics here

Amazon Last Mile Routing Challenge

Exhibition pass

Home Delivery Asia 2021 is held as a fully virtual event

This year, Greenplan is part of Asia’s must-attend event for the retail logistics industry. Challenging times for deliverers with ever-growing e-commerce volumes are bringing together leading logistic experts to share their experiences and learnings from the past few months. The fully virtual event hosts live presentations, live panel debates, and digital round tables with various opinion leaders from retailers, e-commerce platforms, and online sellers. 

Over the 2 days, interesting topics including digital delivery trends, food and grocery delivery, last mile logistics, and warehouse and inventory management will be discussed. The conference will be hosted via Swapcards providing attendees with the chance to visit virtual booths, expand their network, and access innumerable hours of on-demand content.  

Greenplan’s CEO Dr. Clemens Beckmann will be speaking about tour planning intelligence on 7 July at 8:30 a.m. (CET)

As an official event partner, Greenplan will share insights about smart tour planning for last mile logistics. Visitors of the exhibition hall will learn more about the intelligent tour planning algorithm and can read through some case studies.

Furthermore, during the last mile stream Greenplan's CEO Dr. Clemens Beckmann will be speaking about the evolution of tour planning intelligence. In his presentation, he will highlight current drivers of intelligent tour planning in logistics and explain how artificial intelligence helps to excel in tour planning processes. Besides many strengths supporting better results for tours, certain limitations are requiring human knowledge. Dr. Beckmann concludes with an outlook about the evolution of urban deliveries once authorities start to more intensively steer traffic flows controlling air and noise congestion. 

Home Delivery Asia 2021 is organized by Terrapinn. Visitors can book a free exhibition pass to attend the virtual event. 

Dr. Clemens Beckmann speaking at Home Delivery Asia 2021

Conference program

Live and remote: this year's "City Transport and Road Pricing Conference" Europe presented by CiTTi Magazine und RUC Conference 

How has the transport infrastructure in Europe changed over the past years? Which consequences result for the logistics sector? These and many more topics will be discussed at this year's "City Transport & Road Pricing Conference" Europe from 11-12 May. The conference is structured along four main streams: Road pricing/tolling, congestion management, sustainability and emissions, and transportation infrastructure. In addition to interesting keynotes by several industry experts, networking and lively exchange among the attendees should be facilitated. The event will be hosted digitally and provides interesting insights into important trends in urban logistics.

Dr. Clemens Beckmann will be speaking at 12 May at 10:00 (a.m. CET) 

As part of the conference, Dr. Clemens Beckmann will be talking about "Optimized last mile deliveries – efficient and sustainable". In particular, he will outline the importance as well as challenges of tour planning and explain why automated processes are needed but will not replace the human knowledge of dispatchers. In the light of increasingly complex deliveries, Dr Beckmann points out how operators from different industries can overcome known challenges and thus, realize optimized tours.

The City Transport and Road Pricing Conference is organized by CiTTi Magazine and RUC Conference as the second iteration within an international series of online events exploring urban transportation and road pricing. The registration can be found here.

Greenplan as Partner of "City Transport and Road Pricing Conference" 2021

Greenplan Whitepaper

Increased cost and competitive pressure forces logistics operators to implement innovative solutions for last mile distribution

From growing urban mobility to increasing shipment volumes with complex customer expectations: today, logistic operations particularly on the last mile are exposed to various challenges. Increased complexity caused by (external) influencing factors and lacking investments in infrastructure impede efficiently as well as reliable service processes for end customers. Due to these rapid developments, operators and local authorities are equally under pressure. According to experts, innovative solutions are urgently needed to prevent a collapse of the urban delivery ecosystem.

Especially, technologies featuring digitized as well as automated operational processes and deliveries are continuously discussed. Apparently, many companies do not benefit from available solutions and thus, are lagging behind. Despite ongoing discussions, many solutions blunder into a conflict of objectives among operators, local authorities, and customers.

Optimized tour planning as an efficient tool for deliveries on the last mile

Apart from this conflict, tour optimization tends to offer great potential for more efficiency within urban delivery systems. In addition to improved routes helping to relieve city traffic or ease the predictability of shipments, tour optimization ensures better workforce and fleet utilization. Automated processes due to a higher digital maturity and the usage of intelligent software enable logistics service providers to benefit from optimized tours and disburden the urban ecosystem. Moreover, such applications offer remarkable cost-saving potential.

Inevitably, operators need to follow an implementation process before using intelligent tour planning tools. Today, cloud-based solutions coming as "software as a service"-package reduce integration efforts and ensure the rapid availability of such applications.

Despite all mentioned advantages and the fast deployment, many logisticians reveal difficulties regarding the introduction of digital planning systems. Yet, which factors are essential to consider and which obstacles are to overcome when implementing a modern tour planning solution?

Greenplan published Whitepaper for an introduction of tour planning software and the accompanying change management processes

Recently, Greenplan addressed this very question in a whitepaper named "Tour optimization in urban last mile". Within a qualitative data analysis, logisticians and other industry experts were interviewed about the status quo of the usage of digital planning tools. Thereby, relevant parameters for planning optimized routes on the last mile were identified and decisive impediments for necessary inter-company change management were discussed. 

The results indicate that there is no clear correlation between the type of tour planning or specific shipment volumes with regards to company size or underlying industry. However, findings prove that a more static and thus, manual tour planning approach leads to insufficient resource usage, data problems, missing standardization, lacking optimization know-how, and inefficient routes. Interestingly, in particular, companies, which tend to follow a rather inefficient tour planning approach assess their own processes as heavily digitized, technically mature, and highly efficient. Probably, this evaluation stems from a more emotional perspective. In turn, a more problem- as well as solution-oriented attitude towards the introduction of new technologies evokes a negative perception of necessary changes. 

Ongoing digitization and altering market conditions compel operators to adjust. Solutions for tour optimization should be implemented following a staged and iterative approach avoiding financial as well as operative risks. This provides a solid base for sustainable acceptance of change and empowers companies to pursue further change.

Gradual adoption of digitized tour planning  

Based on the results, a phased implementation roadmap for digital tour planning on the last mile was developed. The underlying concept contains a four-step selection process followed by a three-step action plan. During the selection processes service providers focus on the identification of processes offering the greatest potential for improvement through digitization. Subsequently, the action plan defines concrete steps for achieving a new digital maturity for all selected processes. Continuously challenging and running through the model adds value as well as acceptance. For most companies, external support can be particularly helpful regarding the self-evaluation and assessment of processes. 

We offer the whitepaper "Tour optimization in urban last mile: Strategic roadmap for a phased implementation of digital tour planning" containing a complete summary of the researched results as a free download.

The survey and the model for implementation of digitized tour optimization are part of a scientific thesis written by Kristin Dörfer in cooperation with Greenplan.