Operations Centers for Logistics: General Concepts and the Deutsche Post Case

The concept of an Operations Center (OC) is a familiar one, particularly in military environments. The NASA Space Center for monitoring space flights perhaps best embodies the notion of what an OC looks like. Private companies have similar needs with respect to their day to day operations. For example in the transportation logistics and telecommunication area large enterprises start to develop their Operations Centres. Those centers typically perform the functions: performance measurement and continuous improvement of the networks, real-time control of operations and complex processes, customer care and marketing. We present a case study of the Deutsche Post OC which is under development to support the management of complex transportation networks operated for mail delivery within Germany. The Deutsche Post Case amply demonstrates the integration challenges an undertaking of this magnitude encounters. Many complex optimization models were built, solved, and integrated, and sophisticated information delivery mechanisms were subsequently required to make the model results useful for management decision analysis and support.