USPS Capstone Project

Fall 2013
Team Members: Dallas Kuchel, Efrain Reyes, Matthew Stirling

Results

Our model provides several key pieces of information including:

1. The number of carriers required to efficiently deliver all packages.
2. A list of addresses that each carrier will deliver to. This allows the sorting and processing facility to sort the proper packages into each delivery truck.
3. An ordered list of their deliveries for each carrier (driver) including the number of packages to be delivered to each address.

To test the robustness of our model, the group solved six different delivery lists. Five of the delivery lists contained 400 addresses and one contained 2,000. We found that four of the five delivery sets solved within the required 5-10 minute range.

To compare the efficiency of our solution to the RouteSmart system, the team requested the client run the same set of addresses through RouteSmart. The client ran set number 3 through RouteSmart and provided our team with the results.

Our model solution determined a solution with eight carriers. These eight carriers travel a total of 95.4 miles and complete their routes in a total of 1,400 minutes. Our model provided this information in 5.5 minutes .

RouteSmart produced a very similar solution that delivered all packages with six carriers in 1295 minutes and over a distance of 87.9 miles.

For this delivery set, our model’s solution is within 8% of the RouteSmart solution. This impressive result verifies that our solution could be useful for the Postal Service.

The routes that our solution and RouteSmart produced can be found below: