Federal Express Coorporation hs ued operations research to help make its

major business decisin since its overnigth package delivery operations

began 1973.Subsequently,a successful origin-destionation model followed by
models to simulate opeations,finances,engie use,personal assgments ,and
route strucrues influenced the conduct of business during periods of
substantial growth.
Turboprop planes were too slow
Company was forced to operate as an air taxi service and use aircraft that had
a payload of less that 7,500 lbs. Executive jets were the only aircraft that
would. Compared with other executive jets the Falcons were studier, had
lower operating coats, and featured a GE engine that was more powerful and
considered more reliable than the Pratt and Whitney on Air Research engines.
The founders were familiar with the south, and this seemed an appropriate
place to begin their new business
The First Model
After getting over the initial shock, Fred Smith appointed a task force headed
by Charles Brandon, a physicists and ardent flyer he had in1962. They used
all this to establish a coefficient of outbound market potential.
Come FLY with Me
The model drew on a database that contained information on the
characteristics of airports throughout the US. But it had to overcome two major
hurdles to get them to sing up. First, most potential investors had difficulty
with the hub concept
With these successes, modeling became a way of life for FedEx. Soon it
developed a three-model management planning system.
As it turned out, because of the teams generous assumptions on
consumption, FedEx received a greater fuel allocation that it actually needed
during the panic
Because the systems activities are interdependent, speeding up one activity
does not necessarily improve anything else.
The Model showed that there were not enough engines in the world to fly
FedExs fleet hours given its forecasted continual need to replace bluckets}
Hinson determined that FedEx needed a forecasting model to bridge the gap
between the origin destination model and FLY and to sharpen its estimates of
daily package counts for each city.

The Pittsburgh solution proved to be temporary. FedEx faced an even bigger
crisis, almost immediately.
As has become the custom at FedEx OR was represented in the weekly senior
management meetings. During this era,Brandon attended the meetings,often
accompanied by ponder or hinson or some other members of the OR team.
This modelbased lobbying eventually got results. In November, the house of
representatives passed the air cargo reform bill
The problem was formulated as a multiperiod, multi. stage stochastic
transition model. The OR team used fleet and operating requirements for a
decade or more in the future to lay out pilot requirements by aircraft type each
period.
Some preliminary model results suggested that a central telephone answering
system was the best solution. Other cities immediately demanded that thet too
be added to the system. Despite some known flaws.
The model clearly showed that length of call was the most important factor in
determining call headling performance. When the network was small,its
volumes low,and the falcons the only aircraft,a single hub in Memphis was
clearly the best choice.
Their first tas wast to expand their modeling approach. autoroute , it turned
out, could be used to estimate the performance of feeders into a regional
hub.,but it was incapable of determining whether or not a given hub should
remain in the final system network.
With this in mind, Brandon,by now senior vice-president for planning and
information systems sougth out and hired howard bedford,an expert in airline
reservation systems, to develop a compreshemsive system
From the veru beginning . fred smith wanted to maintain constant surveillance
on every package that entered the fedEx system.
Enliste los diferentes beneficios financieros y no financieros que resultaron
de este estudio.


beneficios financieros

it used fly to produce shedules and determinate the resource requirements for these cities.

FedEx created a financial planning model to show the overrall economic and financial
implications of alternative route

The airline and ir cargo industries are whole systems bussines with high levels

They used all of this to establish a coefficent of outbound market potential




no financieros que resultaron


it used an improved origin-destination flow model to determinate the what

involes plotting an entire stations deliveres by route number on the stations service rea
map

this will reveal operation problems in the route structure.


Ficha de referencia en el formato IEEE
Sigafoos,Robert A. and Easson, Roger R. 1988, Absolutely, Positively,
Overnigth The Unofficial Coporate History of Federal Exprees, St. Lukes Press,
Memphis,Tennessee
McKenney,James l.; Copeland, Duncan C; and Mason, Richard O. 1995 waves
of Change Business Evolution Through Information Technology; Harvard
Business School Press