DPD France optimizes last-mile deliveries with Kardinal's solution
A major player in parcel delivery, DPD France is optimizing its delivery network design and route planning thanks to Kardinal. Discover what the DPD France teams have to say about implementing Kardinal and its daily benefits.
If you prefer to read the DPD France case study summary in pdf, it is here 
About DPD France
DPD France is the French subsidiary of GeoPost/DPDgroup, Europe’s leading parcel delivery network, specialized in the transport of parcels under 30 kilos. DPD France is a network of 70 delivery centers and 5 national sorting centers, handling, processing and delivering over 400,000 parcels every day.
Pre-project overview
The partnership between DPD France and Kardinal started 3 years ago. DPD France's objective was to provide our operational staff with a modern decision-making tool to enable them to manage their first and last-mile deliveries more efficiently.
Confronted with the challenges of the logistics and transport industry (climate crisis, labor shortages, rising operational costs, etc.), DPD France’s teams needed a tool to optimize their network design and so improve their performance. More specifically, the complexity of last-mile operations raises major challenges in terms of designing routes to effectively and efficiently meet service requirements whilst being cost efficient. Post-COVID-19, consumer habits have undergone substantial change, and DPD France has had to review its distribution model.
DPD France has always relied on its skilled and experienced employees and their local understanding. However, given the challenges of the industry, we had to move from an intuitive to a model-based approach. To achieve this, we introduced a program dedicated to operational excellence, aimed at improving performance in a number of areas.
To overcome the operational teams’ initial concerns about using new tools, we had to involve them in building the solution, and provide them with a decision-making tool adapted to their expectations. DPD France then decided to work with Kardinal to optimize last-mile sectorization, thus facilitating the work of their 600 in-house drivers and 4,000 subcontracted routes.
The solution
Why Kardinal?
For DPD France, several elements were decisive in choosing Kardinal’s solution:
- The powerful mathematical algorithms driving the solution make it possible to quickly support operational staff in designing their delivery networks.
- The solution’s appreciation of constraints and requirements was perfectly adapted to the network's operational and management needs.
Kardinal's solution was designed by depot managers for depot managers, making it perfectly suited to their needs
- The support provided to DPD’s teams by Kardinal’s Solution Engineering and Customer Success teams in the field was extremely valuable in ensuring that the solution was used properly. Regional kick-offs were held in each delivery center to train staff and educate them about the solution. Additional training sessions were then organized to further develop users' skills.
We carried out several working groups with Kardinal and some of our depot managers to analyze and adapt the solution to our constraints. The aim was to ensure that the Kardinal teams had a thorough understanding of our business, so that the tool would be as consistent and effective as possible. This is why we don't consider Kardinal as a traditional software publisher, but rather as a partner.
Today, around 150 people use Kardinal’s solution. Operational teams comprising branch managers and operations managers use the tool on a regular basis to challenge their business organizations. The support teams, through the regional performance and methods managers, encourage branches to implement Kardinal.
The benefits
After 3 years of collaboration, DPD France’s teams have noticed several benefits. Kardinal’s ergonomic, high-performance solution has been widely adopted by the teams who use it on a daily basis to optimize their last-mile routes.
Thanks to cutting-edge algorithms, branch managers and operations managers can optimize their area’s sectorization to effectively distribute the workload between in-house drivers and subcontractors, for enhanced performance. By providing greater comfort, the solution ensures the best possible working conditions for drivers.
Kardinal helped us professionalize last-mile operations by transforming our delivery drivers into professional drivers. We have succeeded in bringing management change to the behavior and attitude of all our drivers, whether in-house or subcontracted. This decision-making tool has also enabled us to eliminate a number of irritants, not only by facilitating the work of our employees, but also by generating more value for our customers.
Operational teams have also noticed an improvement in communications with their subcontracting partners. Previously, discussions were based on limited factual information. They are now based on tangible data shared between stakeholders, facilitating communication and collaboration.
Thanks to Kardinal, operational staff can now model their business in a predictive way, and quickly adapt their resources to parcel volume and profile changes. They can simulate different organizational models, such as fleet conversion to cleaner vehicles (electric vehicles, cargo bikes, etc.) or the redistribution of areas operated by subcontractors.
Finally, Kardinal’s solution has helped DPD France to better meet its commitments to customers. For example, the Predict home delivery service achieved a 4% improvement in time slot compliance.
Watch the video feedback of DPD France team's below:
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