A solution is proposed for the problem of correspondence delivery done by the post service system, using some Operation Research techniques. Having in mind that the delivery and its preceding phases (selection and sorting) are manually made, there is a necessity to optimise these procedures and that is possible reorganising the postmen's delivery areas. To do that, this problem was treated as a Vehicle Routing Problem. Many classic algorithms were used, at first to determine the postmen's delivery area, called postal districts, and then to establish the mail delivery route, using in this phase the real distance among the delivery points. Many tests were done changing the algorithms and initial parameters, and the results were compared using the total distances and the computational time spent, in order to determine the algorithms with the best performance.
vehicle routing problem; clusters; optimal routes
