scholarly journals PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS OF ROBOTIC DELIVERY OF THE LAST MILE. THE RELEVANCE OF THE PROBLEM AND THE CONCEPT OF THE SOLUTION. PART I.

Author(s):  
Yu. Khamukov ◽  
M. Kanokova

The express delivery market in recent years has been growing at the level of 3-4%, and even in these conditions, not only is it not saturated, but the demand for it is growing. According to Oxford Economics, the growth of the air cargo market, which determines the volume of the express delivery market, accelerated at times up to 7% per year from 2013 to 2018 [1]. The biggest changes took place in 2016-17 due to a technological breakthrough in the field of logistics with the introduction of services such as drone delivery, processing orders on the blockchain, calculation of the delivery mode using artificial intelligence, etc. It was expected that due to the growing demand on fast delivery guaranteed, the number of express delivery employees worldwide will grow to 4.5 million over the next few years. But the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this process. In the study “The Future of Freight Transportation. How new technologies and new thinking can change the movement of goods”, presented by the international network of consulting companies Deloitte in 2017, states that carriers have already solved many of the problems associated with the transportation of goods. But the “last mile delivery” stage has remained limiting the development of the delivery service. At this stage, companies suffer losses due to the concentration of logistics, algorithmic and kinematic tasks that cannot be automated with modern means and technologies for replacing human labor. Consequently, the use of alternative, unconventional technologies at this stage is a key condition for the mass development of delivery.

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-452
Author(s):  
D. Dupljanin ◽  
M. Mirkovic ◽  
S. Dumnic ◽  
D. Culibrk ◽  
S. Milisavljevic ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 456
Author(s):  
Dragan Lazarević ◽  
Libor Švadlenka ◽  
Valentina Radojičić ◽  
Momčilo Dobrodolac

A rapid development of Internet technologies creates new opportunities for e-commerce, which is one of the fastest-growing segments of the entire economy. For policymakers, the most important aspects of e-commerce are related to the cost reduction in transportation, facilitation of administration and communication, innovations at the market level, and environmental issues. An unavoidable part of the e-commerce production process is related to the postal service. New market expectations of modern society lead to the consideration of upgrading the traditional express delivery service in terms of time availability. In this paper, we propose a new 24-h availability of postal and courier service so-called “post express nonstop”. To assess the potential demand for this kind of service, we propose a forecasting procedure based on the Bass diffusion model. In particular, the research is directed toward the examination of environmental issues, considering both types of services—traditional and the proposed new one. A comparison is done by analyzing CO2 emissions in the last-mile delivery of goods to the users’ addresses. The experiment was carried out in the city of Belgrade, simulating the last-mile delivery under realistic conditions and controlling the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. In accordance with the results of this experiment and the forecasted number of postal items, a projection of CO2 emissions for the new service from 2020 to 2025 was carried out. The results show a significant contribution of the proposed new express delivery service to environmental well-being and sustainability.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seung Ko ◽  
Sung Cho ◽  
Chulung Lee

Recently, last mile delivery has emerged as an essential process that greatly affects the opportunity of obtaining delivery service market share due to the rapid increase in the business-to-consumer (B2C) service market. Express delivery companies are investing to expand the capacity of hub terminals to handle increasing delivery volume. As for securing massive delivery quantity by investment, companies must examine the profitability between increasing delivery quantity and price. This study proposes two strategies for a company’s decision making regarding the adjustment of market density and price by developing a pricing and collaboration model based on the delivery time of the last mile process. A last mile delivery time function of market density is first derived from genetic algorithm (GA)-based simulation results of traveling salesman problem regarding the market density. The pricing model develops a procedure to determine the optimal price, maximizing the profit based on last mile delivery time function. In addition, a collaboration model, where a multi-objective integer programming problem is developed, is proposed to sustain long-term survival for small and medium-sized companies. In this paper, sensitivity analysis demonstrates the effect of delivery environment on the optimal price and profit. Also, a numerical example presents four different scenarios of the collaboration model to determine the applicability and efficiency of the model. These two proposed models present managerial insights for express delivery companies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Simić ◽  
Dragan Lazarević ◽  
Momčilo Dobrodolac

Abstract Background Last-mile delivery (LMD) is becoming more and more demanding due to an increasing number of users and traffic problems in cities. Besides, medical crises (like the COVID-19 outbreak) and air pollution represent additional motives for the transition from traditional to socially and environmentally sustainable LMD mode. An emerging problem for companies in the postal and logistics industry is how to determine the best LMD mode in a multi-criteria setting under uncertainty. Method For the first time, an extension of the Weighted Aggregated Sum Product ASsessment (WASPAS) method under the picture fuzzy environment is presented to solve the LMD mode selection problem. The introduced picture fuzzy set (PFS) based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method can be highly beneficial to managers who are in charge of LMD since it can take into account the neutral/refusal information and efficiently deal with high levels of imprecise, vague, and uncertain information. The comparative analysis with the existing state-of-the-art PFS-based MCDM methods approved the high reliability of the proposed picture fuzzy WASPAS method. Its high robustness and consistency are also confirmed. The presented method can be used to improve LMD in urban areas worldwide. Besides, it can be applied to solve other emerging MCDM problems in an uncertain environment. Findings A real-life case study of Belgrade is presented to fully illustrate the potentials and applicability of the picture fuzzy WASPAS method. The results show that postomates are the best mode for LMD in Belgrade, followed by cargo bicycles, drones, traditional delivery, autonomous vehicles, and tube transport.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Jiang ◽  
Changyong Liang ◽  
Junfeng Dong ◽  
Wenxing Lu ◽  
Marko Mladenovic

Frequent time window changing disruptions result in high secondary delivery rates in the last mile delivery. With the rapid growth of parcel volumes in online shopping, the time window changing disruptions could translate to substantial delivery cost-wastes. In recent years, customer pickup (CP), a new delivery mode that allows customers to pick up their parcels from shared delivery facilities, has provided a new way to deal with such disruptions. This study proposed a disruption recovery problem with time windows change in the last mile delivery in which customers can be served through home delivery (HD) or CP. A variant variable neighborhood descent (VVND) algorithm was presented to solve the problem. Computational experiments based on a set of instances were tested, and results were compared with other heuristics in the literature, which have affirmed the competitiveness of the model and algorithm.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 5844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seung Yoon Ko ◽  
Ratna Permata Sari ◽  
Muzaffar Makhmudov ◽  
Chang Seong Ko

As e-commerce is rapidly expanding, efficient and competitive product delivery system to the final customer is highly required. Recently, the emergence of a smart platform is leading the transformation of distribution, performance, and quality in express delivery services, especially in the last-mile delivery. The business to consumer (B2C) through smart platforms such as Amazon in America and Coupang in Korea utilizes the differentiated delivery rates to increase the market share. In contrast, the small and medium-sized express delivery companies with low market share are trying hard to expand their market share. In order to fulfill all customer needs, collaboration is needed. This study aims to construct a collaboration model to maximize the net profit by considering the market density of each company. A Baduk board game is used to derive the last-mile delivery time function of market density. All companies in collaboration have to specialize the delivery items into certain service clustering types, which consist of regular, big sized/weighted, and cold items. The multi-objective programming model is developed based on max-sum and max-min criteria. The Shapley value and nucleolus approaches are applied to find the profit allocation. Finally, the applicability of the proposed collaboration model is shown through a numerical example.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (16) ◽  
pp. 4748
Author(s):  
Adrian Serrano-Hernandez ◽  
Aitor Ballano ◽  
Javier Faulin

Urban distribution in medium-sized cities faces a major challenge, mainly when deliveries are difficult in the city center due to: an increase of e-commerce, weak public transportation system, and the promotion of urban sustainability plans. As a result, private cars, public transportation, and freight transportation compete for the same space. This paper analyses the current state for freight logistics in the city center of Pamplona (Spain) and proposes alternative transportation routes and transportation modes in the last-mile city center distribution according to different criteria evaluated by residents. An analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was developed. A number of alternatives have been assessed considering routes and transportation modes: the shortest route criterion and avoiding some city center area policies are combined with traditional van-based, bike, and aerial (drone) distribution protocols for delivering parcels and bar/restaurant supplies. These alternatives have been evaluated within a multicriteria framework in which economic, environmental, and social objectives are considered at the same time. The point in this multicriteria framework is that the criteria/alternative AHP weights and priorities have been set according to a survey deployed in the city of Pamplona (Navarre, Spain). The survey and AHP results show the preference for the use of drone or bike distribution in city center in order to reduce social and environmental issues.


Author(s):  
Vincent E. Castillo ◽  
John E. Bell ◽  
Diane A. Mollenkopf ◽  
Theodore P. Stank

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