A novel districting design approach for on-time last-mile delivery: An application on an express postal company

•A novel districting design framework for on time last mile delivery is presented.•The framework addresses operational challenges intensified by the COVID 19 pandemics.•An ad hoc formulation is presented and a specially tailored heuristic is designed.•The proposed framework is applied on a case study from an express postal company.•The results show the approach’s capacity to provide effective and robust solutions.