DHL is an American international logistics company providing courier, package delivery and

express mail service, which is a division of the German logistics firm Deutsche Post. The company
group delivers over 1.6 billion parcels per year.Since the early 1970s, DHL has been the leading
overnight carrier in many markets around the world. Founded in 1969 by Adrian Dalsey, Larry
Hillblom, and Robert Lynn (hence, the D, H, and L) to transport letters of credit across the
PacificDHL expanded rapidly in Asia and Europe (the early 1970s), the Middle East (1976),
Latin America (1977), Africa (1978), Eastern Europe (early 1980s), China (1986), and Albania
and the Baltic States (1992).To handle all these shipments, DHL uses a worldwide hub and
spoke system. It collects packages, documents, and letters from individual local business offices
and sends them to the nearest service center the items are sorted by destination and shipped to
service centers in each country, where they are resorted for the last leg of the journey to a local
destination. DHL employs its own people to deliver documents and packages abroad; most
other carriers hire local agencies. However, DHL does not always use its own airplanes, as
FedEx and UPS do. Instead, wherever possible, DHL buys lift capability from international
carriers, establishing its own air service only when it must. By doing this, DHL can find flights at
all times between locations rather than relying on one or two flights of its own. This gives DHL
greater flexibility not only in timing, but also in capacity.Flexibility is important in serving today’s
distribution customers. One important form of flexibility is the timing of delivery and pickups. To
provide such flexibility, DHL is experimenting with mobile collections. In Dublin, it launched the
Super Bus, which follows a set route through the city to pick up and deliver parcel sit has
improved service through earlier deliveries and later pickups. DHL provides another important
customer service through DHL NET—a high-speed data network developed jointly by DHL and
IBMDHL has also created a system called EasyShip, which lets customers prepare their own
shipping documents and maintain databases of their customer addresses in-houseIn addition to
its traditional services—such as overnight documents and parcels delivery, same-day service
between locations in the United States and to some foreign countries, and international air
freight—DHL also provides third-party logistics services. More recently, DHL Worldwide Express
formalized a multimillion-dollar agreement with Roche Diagnostics, a division of the international
healthcare company, F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd.. DHL will act as Roche’s logistics partner, with
responsibility for the storage, pick and pack distribution, and inventory management of parts for
diagnostic analytical systems. As an express carrier, timely delivery and customer
satisfaction are its objectives. These objectives can be met by effective operations
management. However, problems commonly arise in a company and through operations
management problems can be tackled by observation, formulation, analysis and
implementation. .