Two is better than one? Order aggregation in a meal delivery scheduling problem

We address a single-machine scheduling problem motivated by a last-mile-delivery setting for a food company. Customers place orders, each characterized by a delivery point (customer location) and an ideal delivery time. An order is considered on time if it is delivered to the customer within a time window given by the ideal delivery time , where is the same for all orders. A single courier (machine) is in charge of delivery to all customers. Orders are either delivered individually, or two orders can be aggregated in a single courier trip. All trips start and end at the restaurant, so no routing decisions are needed. The problem is to schedule courier trips so that the number of late orders is minimum. We show that the problem with order aggregation is -hard and propose a combinatorial branch and bound algorithm for its solution. The algorithm performance is assessed through a computational study on instances derived by a real-life application and on randomly generated instances. The behavior of the combinatorial algorithm is compared with that of the best ILP formulation known for the problem. Through another set of computational experiments, we also show that an appropriate choice of design parameters allows to apply the algorithm to a dynamic context, with orders arriving over time

Ant Colony Optimization on Crowdsourced Delivery Trip Consolidation

Common practice in crowdsourced delivery services is through direct delivery. That  is by dispatching direct trip to a driver nearby the origin location. The total distance can be reduced through multiple pickup and delivery by increasing the number of requests in a trip. The research implements exact algorithm to solve the consolidation problem with up to 3 requests in a trip. Greedy heuristic is performed to construct initial route based on highest savings. The result is then optimized using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Four scenarios are compared. A direct delivery scenarios and three multiple pickup and delivery scenarios. These include 2-consolidated delivery, 3-consolidated delivery, and 3-consolidated delivery optimized with ACO. Four parameters are used to evaluate using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). These include the number of trips, total distance, total duration, and security concerns. The case study is based on Yogyakarta area for a whole day. The final route optimized with ACO shows 178 requests can be completed in 94 trips. Compared to direct delivery, consolidation can provides savings up to 20% in distance and 14% in duration. The evaluation result using AHP shows that ACO scenario is the best scenario

Ant Colony Optimization on Crowdsourced Delivery Trip Consolidation

Common practice in crowdsourced delivery services is through direct delivery. That  is by dispatching direct trip to a driver nearby the origin location. The total distance can be reduced through multiple pickup and delivery by increasing the number of requests in a trip.The research implements exact algorithm to solve the consolidation problem with up to 3 requests in a trip. Greedy heuristic is performed to construct initial route based on highest savings. The result is then optimized using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Four scenarios are compared. A direct delivery scenarios and three multiple pickup and delivery scenarios. These include 2-consolidated delivery, 3-consolidated delivery, and 3-consolidated delivery optimized with ACO. Four parameters are used to evaluate using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). These include the number of trips, total distance, total duration, and security concerns.The case study is based on Yogyakarta area for a whole day. The final route optimized with ACO shows 178 requests can be completed in 94 trips. Compared to direct delivery, consolidation can provides savings up to 20% in distance and 14% in duration. The evaluation result using AHP shows that ACO scenario is the best scenario.

Mobility on Demand in the United States

The growth of shared mobility services and enabling technologies, such as smartphone apps, is contributing to the commodification and aggregation of transportation services. This chapter reviews terms and definitions related to Mobility on Demand (MOD) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS), the mobility marketplace, stakeholders, and enablers. This chapter also reviews the U.S. Department of Transportation’s MOD Sandbox Program, including common opportunities and challenges, partnerships, and case studies for employing on-demand mobility pilots and programs. The chapter concludes with a discussion of vehicle automation and on-demand mobility including pilot projects and the potential transformative impacts of shared automated vehicles on parking, land use, and the built environment

Chapter 13 - Sharing strategies: carsharing, shared micromobility (bikesharing and scooter sharing), transportation network companies, microtransit, and other innovative mobility modes

Shared mobility—the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle, or other mode—is an innovative transportation strategy that enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an “as-needed” basis. It includes various forms of carsharing, bikesharing, scooter sharing, ridesharing (carpooling and vanpooling), transportation network companies (TNCs), and microtransit. Included in this ecosystem are smartphone “apps” that aggregate and optimize these mobility options, as well as “courier network services” that provide last mile package and food delivery. This chapter describes different models that have emerged in shared mobility and reviews research that has quantified the environmental, social, and transportation-related impacts of these services

Analytical model for large-scale design of sidewalk delivery robot systems

With the rise in demand for local deliveries and e-commerce, robotic deliveries are being considered as efficient and sustainable solutions. However, the deployment of such systems can be highly complex due to numerous factors involving stochastic demand, stochastic charging and maintenance needs, complex routing, etc. We propose a model that uses continuous approximation methods for evaluating service trade-offs that consider the unique characteristics of large-scale sidewalk delivery robot systems used to serve online food deliveries. The model captures both the initial cost and the operation cost of the delivery system and evaluates the impact of constraints and operation strategies on the deployment. By minimizing the system cost, variables related to the system design can be determined. First, the minimization problem is formulated based on a homogeneous area, and the optimal system cost can be derived as a closed-form expression. By evaluating the expression, relationships between variables and the system cost can be directly obtained. We then apply the model in neighborhoods in New York City to evaluate the cost of deploying the sidewalk delivery robot system in a real-world scenario. The results shed light on the potential of deploying such a system in the future