Determining the number of postal units in the network – Fuzzy approach, Serbia case study

One of the main, current, goals of the public postal operators in developing countries is to define the model for proper postal network design and access. The access to the postal network represents a set of different elements that interact with each other and have a common aim of providing continuous, of high quality, reliable and sustainable universal postal service. Worldwide experience suggests different approaches in defining the components and criteria for establishing the system of access to the postal network of the public operator. In this paper we present two different approaches. The first one is based on criteria determined in previous study and, here, we develop proper mathematical formulation. The second one is new, general, method created to generate fuzzy rules from numerical data, well known as Wang–Mendel’s method. The authors apply both methods on real data collected from Serbian municipalities and finally, compare results obtained by them.

► Goal is to minimize the number of permanent postal units of postal network. ► New approach for determining the required number of permanent postal units. ► Wang–Mendel’s (WM’s) method is applied. ► The main advantage of described model is in the fact that experts’ opinion and experience are embedded. ► A case study of municipalities’ characteristics in Serbia are used for numerical evaluation and testing.