Practical aspects of route planning for magazine and newspaper wholesalers

The complex distribution problem of magazine and newspaper wholesalers is an ideal field for the application of mathematical methods, though the success of consultancy projects in this sector does not depend on the quality of the methods alone. Before building models to describe the distribution problem, it is necessary to identify the specific characteristics of routing plans in the press wholesaling sector, and to choose an adequate and acceptable approach to the problem, both from a theoretical and a practical perspective. Thereafter, models for the road system, time structure and delivery volume are built and integrated into a consultancy process. The consultancy approach underlines that optimisation of routing plans in this sector is more than just a pure mathematical problem, but that a project's success depends essentially on the constructional team work of client and consultant.