Improving the performance of service network through location-based optimization and analysis. A case study on postal service in a city in Northern Norway

Abstract

Everyone needs to be served, and a service network provides a set of services and/or help to please the people involved. No matter who is the service provider, government or retailer, there always been a clash between them and customers. Service providers are trying their best to serve customers as many as possible with a limitation of cost, while the satisfaction of customer might be neglected at the same time. According to find a balance between objectives of both customers and service providers. Three concepts: Availability, Efficient and Accessibility are proposed in this paper corresponding to three classic facility location mathematical models: set covering location model, maximal covering location, and p-median models. In addition, a real-world case study of postal service network in a city in Northern Norway is included under for the purpose of improving the service performance based on the three concepts mentioned above. Excel Solver is applied for simulating all three covering mathematical models