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Industry news and insights into efficient logistics solutions: Learn more about optimized tour planning for logistics experts and field services!

News about logistic tour optimization | Greenplan

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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 present CiTTi Magazine und RUC Conference this year's "City Transport and Road Pricing Conference" Europe

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.

Greenplan whitepaper about tour optimization on the last mile

Discrete Mathematics for Green Route Planning: Scientific knowledge complements logistics expertise

Since 2017, the University of Bonn and Greenplan officially cooperate to find a viable solution for optimal tour planning. Over the past few years together with the Research Institute for Discrete Mathematics, Greenplan has developed and launched an algorithm, which exploits the full optimization potential of smart tours. The algorithm, which runs as software as a service solution is already successfully implemented in practice. The cloud-based solution is applicable for a large group of customers ranging from logistics providers to field service operators. Due to its intelligent product design, Greenplan provides great potential for considerable cost savings and reductions in CO2-emissions. Last year, Greenplan received the PostEurop Innovation Award. Recently, the mathematicians from the University of Bonn led by Professor Jens Vygen succeeded in finding a better approximation ratio for the "Capacitated Vehicle Routing". This is the first one in 30 years. The authors Jannis Blauth, Vera Traub, and Jens Vygen will receive the Best Paper Award at IPCO 2021, which will be held in May and which is the worldwide leading conference on Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization.

The General-Anzeiger Bonn reports in a detailed article (€; language German) about the idea of Greenplan and the underlying cooperation. 

The University of Bonn announces the continuation of the successful cooperation with Greenplan

Recently, the University of Bonn officially announced that the cooperation will now be continued for an unlimited period. In this context, Professor Jens Vygen outlined: “The collaboration with the logistic experts at Greenplan was very fruitful from the start. We developed an algorithm that is not only flexibly applicable but also delivers excellent results after only a short computation time.” Also, Dr. Clemens Beckmann - CEO of Greenplan - is happy about the new contract and the ongoing collaboration: "The great professionalism in the collaboration, as well as the geographical proximity, have been the basis for the extremely fast development, during which the logistic and scientific expertise complemented each other optimally. With the new contract, we have further strengthened our cooperation and we are looking forward to our future collaboration."

The official press release and more information about the University of Bonn as well as the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) can be found here.

University of Bonn and Greenplan perpetuate cooperation

Optimized tour planning - Efficient and sustainable deliveries on the last mile

Digital Logistics Days 2021 content is now available on demand

End of March, the Bundesvereinigung Logistik e.V. (BVL) hosted the Digital Logistics Days 2021. The digital conference focused on the latest trends, developments, and innovations around the areas of "Warehousing & Fulfillment", "Last Mile & Delivery", and "Transport & Global". During the three different topical streams, a wide range of industry experts presented valuable insights and discussed the future of logistics. As an official event partner, Greenplan was delighted to be part of such a strong event. All videos from the Digital Logistics Days 2021 are now available on-demand and can be viewed here. The event was held in German.

Dr. Clemens Beckmann outlines the importance of optimized tour planning 

The second day of the conference featured a keynote of Dr. Clemens Beckmann (CEO Greenplan GmbH) about "Optimized tour planning - Efficient and sustainable deliveries on the last mile". He underlined the importance of efficient tour planning as a sound basis for more sustainability in logistics. Smart planning tools - such as the Greenplan algorithm - can help operators to overcome serious challenges in urban logistics. From dispatchers to drivers: all employees benefit from intelligent solutions to gain greater flexibility in their operations and adapt to changing customer needs. Cloud-based planning software tools are readily available and consider customer-specific delivery requirements. 

Digital Logistics Days 2021: recording online

Full recording

Full webinar recording now available on YouTube

Last week, Dr. Clemens Beckmann attended the Postal Innovation Platform (PIP) online executive forum on route optimization. The speakers (Juha Tolvanen, Posti; Markus Steinmann, Swiss Post; Tien-Ti Mak, Premonition.io; Clemens Beckmann, Greenplan (DHL); Robert Dohrendorf, Graphmasters) discussed the latest technologies, opportunities, and challenges in an area, which on the one hand can help postal, express and logistics companies to significantly increase quality and efficiency and on the other hand decrease costs as well as a waste of resources. Route optimization aims at finding the most cost-effective tours among a complex set of parameters: the number of stops, customer time windows, driver schedules, vehicles and their respective capacities, road or traffic conditions, and some more. The overall delivery process already starts in the sorting center, includes the loading of trucks and vehicles, and ends with an optimized (successful) delivery on the last mile.  

The webinar is now available on-demand on the PIP YouTube channel (find the direct link to the video below).  

PIP's mission is to drive innovation in the postal, express, and logistics ecosystem by bringing together postal and logistics companies, academic institutions, innovators, and other stakeholders to shape the future of the sector.

PIP is an open platform and forum that drives innovation in the postal, express, and logistics ecosystem with the objective to contribute to the success of the postal industry in a rapidly changing market environment creating new challenges. With an industry and stakeholder-driven approach PIP guarantees that the right and necessary themes are discussed and analyzed.

For more information visit the PIP website.

Postal Innovation Platform: route optimization webinar recording online

Vote for Greenplan

The WSIS Prizes excursively award projects using information and communication technologies for sustainable growth

The World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) prizes recognize projects leveraging the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to advance sustainable development.  The contest was developed in response to requests from the WSIS stakeholders to create an effective mechanism to evaluate such activities accordingly. Innovative technological solutions and services are crucial in advancing social and economic needs and thus, contributing to the achievement of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Following the outcomes of the United Nations General Assembly Overall Review on WSIS (Res. A/70/125) that called for a close alignment between the WSIS Process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Res. A/70/1), the WSIS Prizes is the unique global platform to identify and showcase success stories in the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines and SDGs.

Greenplan is listed among 20 nominated projects in the category "E-Business"

Greenplan is listed in category 8 "E-Business". The nominated projects are all smart ICT applications providing benefits in different aspects of life. Since its launch, Greenplan proved to be an intelligent solution promoting fruitful exchange between theoretical science and practical application. The tour planning algorithm can be used for more resilient as well as sustainable deliveries on the last mile and beyond. A fully dynamic approach supports the consolidation of tours, a reduction in kilometers, and fewer CO2-emissions. Due to its cloud-native design, the software as a service solution is globally available and can easily be implemented. The Greenplan team follows a clear development roadmap to use the power of the latest technological as well as scientific insights for continuous product improvement. Greenplan provides a robust solution for rising parcel volumes, growing mobility in urban areas, and the need for more sustainable shipments. 

The winning projects per each category will be selected from the five contributions receiving the highest number of votes. Finally, the 18 winning projects will be announced and, together with the 72 champion projects, recognized at the WSIS Prize 2021 Ceremony at WSIS Forum 2021 (17 - 21 May).

Learn more about the WSIS Forum as one of the world’s largest annual multi-stakeholder summits dedicated to ICTs as a force for good here. The Forum provides an international platform where public and private sector stakeholders converge to discuss, network, and take stock on achievements.
