Internal report cluster 1: Urban freight innovations and solutions for sustainable deliveries (1/4)

Technical report about sustainable urban freight solutions, part 1 of

E-business impacts for urban freight: results from an Australian study

E-Business is expected to dramatically change the way business is conducted internationally, nationally, within states and at the local area level. Moreover, these changes are very likely to happen well within the planning time frames required for provision of transport infrastructure and services. E-business is defined as including e-commerce, either between Businesses to Business (B2B) or Business to Customers (B2C), and the adoption of electronic technology within businesses. This paper presents some results from a study commissioned by the Australian National Transport Secretariat (NTS) to assist Australian business and government pro-actively address the transport issues arising from e-business. The resulting working papers will be used to establish a research framework for identifying policy and planning levers to maximize benefits to Australia from national and global e-business activity. The study sought to investigate three principal questions on e-business impacts: how will the transport task change; what will be affected; and how can the transport system respond? Current literature suggests that growth in e-business stems from the combined existence of market demand, suitable enabling technology, and skills and familiarity in management/users/ industry/government. The results of the study suggest that e-business will have implications for urban freight including higher levels of demand for goods and services, increased requirements for logistics distribution, changes in location preferences and improved transport network performance

An exact approach for the grocery delivery problem in urban areas

In this paper, we face the problem of delivering a given amount of goods in urban areas in a business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic commerce (EC) environment. This problem can be considered as a particular case of vehicle routing problem. As a novel issue, here we have to determine the fleet of no homogeneous vehicles to be used for satisfying the demands of clients coming from grocery e-channels, and their related itineraries, given the traveling limits imposed by the urban government; in fact, commercial vehicles are not allowed to go everywhere and can travel only in restricted daily time windows, according to their pollution emissions. We have to minimize the overall distribution costs, taking into account traveling components and setup ones, together with operative aspects and environmental issues; customer requirements, vehicle capacity and daily shift constraints have to be satisfied too. We outline the main characteristics of the problem in a B2C EC environment and propose a mixed integer linear programming model to solve this NP-hard problem. Computational results of test bed cases related to different sized transportation networks and delivery demands are presented and analyzed with respect to the fleet of vehicles chosen for satisfying the customer demand and the street traffic limitations. Then, a realistic case study derived from the e-distribution channel of a grocery company of Genoa, Italy, is reported. Considerations about CPU time and optimality gap are also given with the idea of making the proposed model effectively used and solved with any commercial software

A structured method for the optimization of the existing last mile logistic flows

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceIn a fast-moving world some business exists due to the interconnectivity between countries. This happens because transports are able to reach the other side of the globe within few days and without being too expensive compensating the lower costs of production and competitive advantages. This is true for well-organized and big supply chains but even them can benefit from integration with disconnected and more complex supply chain as it is the case of e-commerce chains. The transaction of small packages from online shopping required in a totally distinct country of the place of production have very specific characteristics as they are spot flows, hard to predict and to combine with other goods owing to the fact that the destination of flows are different every time and it is not always worth it to dedicate a transport for such a small goods value and in addition most times, logistics have to answer to some challenging marketing requirements meaning they have time windows to fulfil. Last mile is a big part of logistics transports and is one important part of it that can really help companies having better prices and revenues for their transports. Last mile solutions need to be easy to implement and really have to translate in quick gains to logistic companies that are largely reducing their margins to increase competitiveness. In this context, the study aims to investigate and define a method following design Research Methodology hopping to draw some innovative solutions for the problem of last mile. In this respect, the work developed intends to study the solutions already implemented and extract insights on how distribution is made and how to maximize last mile profit through the mature of an algorithm able to reduce inefficiencies in a simple way without having to wiggle too much the structure of businesses as resources of last mile service providers are understood to be scarce as many last mile companies are small sized and running under big logistic players. The solution aims to attain the different marketing requirements exactly as it was defined without having to compromise anything but still being able to make good profit margins and perhaps make room for new opportunities to arise that previously were not profitable

Collaboration Planning of Stakeholders for Sustainable City Logistics Operations

City logistics involves movements of goods in urban areas respecting the municipal and administrative guidelines. The importance of city logistics is growing over the years especially with its role in minimizing traffic congestion and freeing up of public space for city residents. Collaboration is key to managing city logistics operations efficiently. Collaboration can take place in the form of goods consolidation, sharing of resources, information sharing, etc. In this thesis, we investigate the problems of collaboration planning of stakeholders to achieve sustainable city logistics operations. Two categories of models are proposed to evaluate the collaboration strategies. At the macro level, we have the simplified collaboration square model and advance collaboration square model and at the micro level we have the operational level model. These collaboration decision making models, with their mathematical elaborations on business-to-business, business-to-customer, customer-to-business, and customer-to-customer provide roadmaps for evaluating the collaboration strategies of stakeholders for achieving sustainable city logistics operations attainable under non-chaotic situation and presumptions of human levity tendency. City logistics stakeholders can strive to achieve effective collaboration strategies for sustainable city logistics operations by mitigating the uncertainty effect and understanding the theories behind the moving nature of the individual complexities of a city. To investigate system complexity, we propose axioms of uncertainty and use spider networks and system dynamics modeling to investigate system elements and their behavior over time. The strength of the proposed work is its novelty and ability to investigate collaboration strategies both from macro- and micro-perspective allowing the decision maker to have a complete picture of the different possible collaboration opportunities and associated strategies and select the one most suited to their needs for sustainable operations planning

Last-mile logistics optimization in the on-demand economy

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Internal report cluster 1: Urban freight innovations and solutions for sustainable deliveries (2/4)

Technical report about sustainable urban freight solutions, part 2 of

Parcel lockers vs. home delivery: a model to compare last-mile delivery cost in urban and rural areas

Purpose This paper investigates the economic performances of two business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce last-mile delivery options -parcel lockers (PLs) and traditional home delivery (HD) in contexts where e-commerce is still at its early stages. It analyses and compares two different implementation contexts, urban and rural areas. Design/methodology/approach This study develops an analytical model that estimates delivery costs for both the PL and HD options. The model is applied to two base cases (representative of urban and rural areas in Italy), and sensitivity analyses are subsequently performed on a set of key variables/parameters (i.e. PL density, PL fill rate and PL annual costs). To support the model development and application, interviews with practitioners (Edwards et al., 2011) were performed. Findings PLs imply lower delivery cost than HD, independently from the implementation area (urban or rural): advantages mainly derive from the higher delivery density and the drastic reduction of failed deliveries. Benefits entailed by PLs are more significant in rural areas due to lower PL investments and annual costs, as well as higher HD costs. Originality/value This paper offers insights to both academics and practitioners. On the academic side, it develops a model to compare the delivery cost of PL and HD, which includes the analysis of urban and rural contexts. This could serve as a platform for developing/informing future analytical/optimisation contributions. On the managerial side, it may support practitioners in making decisions about the implementation of PLs and HD, to benchmark their costs and to identify the main variables and parameters at play

Sustainability in urban logistics : a literature review

Purpose: The importance of urban logistics is on the rise. On the one hand, the population in cities is growing due to urbanization processes. On the other hand, there is a significant increase in the flow of goods (e.g., a boost in online purchases). Such changes are leading cities to face social, economic, and environmental issues, which urge to be addressed. Based on these premises, this study aims to identify, classify and provide an overview of the environmentally sustainable logistics solutions for urban contexts. Methodology: This study performs a systematic literature review. First, it provides a quantitative description of the results, highlighting eventual trends; second, it displays a narrative description of the papers considered to map the current solution and of the related methodology. Findings: The study highlights the maturity and interest in adopting more sustainable delivery options in urban logistics. The selection of suitable transport means, the engagement of stakeholders, as well as the definition of norms and regulations, emerge as the most discussed and promising solutions. Originality: This study is a first attempt to classify the existing body of knowledge related to urban logistics, analysing contributions based on different axes of classification and highlighting cutting-edge solutions to propose possible research directions

Innovative solutions in last mile delivery: concepts, practices, challenges, and future directions

In the last decade, e-commerce has been growing consistently. Fostered by the covid pandemic, online retail has grown exponentially, particularly in industries including food, clothing, groceries and many others. This growth in online retailing activities has raised critical logistic challenges, especially in the last leg of the distribution, commonly referred to as the Last Mile. For instance, traditional truck-based home delivery has reached its limit within metropolitan areas and can no longer be an effective delivery method. Driven by technological progress, several other logistic solutions have been deployed as innovative alternatives to deliver parcels. This includes delivery by drones, smart parcel stations, robots, and crowdsourcing, among others. In this setting, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the latest trends in last-mile delivery solutions from both industry and academic perspectives (see Figure 1 for overview). We use a content analysis literature review to analyse over 80 relevant publications, derive the necessary features of the latest innovation in the last mile delivery, and point out their different maturity levels and the related theoretical and operational challenges