I’d like to thank the great support we received from the AIMMS team and specifically ​@Chris Kuip!

For our joint customer DHL Benelux we’ve build an AIMMS tool. Some details on the case:

DHL annually ships over 100 million parcels from A to B. These millions of parcels go through 3 stages:

1. First mile: collect the parcel at A and bring it to a sorting center/hub
2. Linehaul transport: bring the parcel from the first sorting center to its destination sorting center (this transport is sometimes called the network)
3. Last mile: deliver the parcel from the destination sorting center to B

Our AIMMS based tactical planning optimization tool enables step 2, the network planning: it can automatically create an optimized linehaul planning, considering available resources, crossdocking, sorting curves, special pickups, round trips, one ways, driver breaks and more.

One necessary step in the algorithm is to generate new routes. This is in essence a breadth first search variant, and it was the slowest step in the process, even more so with the increased size of the DHL network.

The great support team of AIMMS managed to completely turn this around, by realizing a performance improvement of a factor of 8-10! (mostly by very cleverly using single line execution statements instead of for loops, but ​@Chris Kuip can share all the details)

This speedup makes development and testing easier, enables quality improvements (e.g. by doing multiple iterations that are now still faster than a single iterations before) and, most importantly, helps making our customer happier with the improved quality and performance!