OPTIMAL LOCATION ANALYSIS OF MICRO DISTRIBUTION CENTERS FOR LAST MILE DELIVERY

A very important issue with the e-commerce delivery service in most of the emerging economies including India is the last mile connectivity. Delivering products, booked online to the remote tier-2 and tier-3 cities remained “costly”. It is observed from firsthand experience with some well-known e-commerce brands in India that their delivery service partners tend to cancel orders that are far away from their tier-2 logistics hubs with the reason shown as “address out of delivery range”. Due to low order density in the far flanges of tier-2 and tier-3 cities arranging vehicles and delivery personnel become costly. In this paper, we propose an innovative delivery model to serve the remote areas by opening edge-hubs at selected places and employing local daily commuters for last mile delivery. Identifying the edge-hubs for opening distribution centers is a costly business if done using traditional field surveys. Here we propose the use of telecom call detail record (CDR) location data as an alternate way of identifying the hubs in real time with much less cost and time.

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Assessing the sustainability of using drone technology for last-mile delivery in a blood supply chain

Journal of Modelling in Management ◽

10.1108/jm2-09-2020-0241 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Ehsan Rashidzadeh ◽

Seyyed Mohammad Hadji Molana ◽

Roya Soltani ◽

Ashkan Hafezalkotob

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Blood Supply ◽

Programming Approach ◽

Distribution Centers ◽

Content Type ◽

Solution Approach ◽

Blood Supply Chain ◽

Last Mile ◽

Last Mile Delivery ◽

The Impact

Purpose Delivery management of perishable products such as blood in a supply chain is a considerable issue such that the last-mile delivery, which refers to deliver goods to the end user as fast as possible takes into account as one of the most important, expensive and, polluting segments in the entire supply chain. Regardless of economic challenges, the last-mile delivery faces social and environmental barriers to continuing operations while complying with environmental and social standards, therefore incorporating sustainability into last-mile logistic strategy is no longer an option but rather a necessity. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to consider a last-mile delivery in a blood supply chain in terms of using appropriate technologies such as drones to assess sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The authors discuss the impact of drone technology on last-mile delivery and its importance in achieving sustainability. They focus on the effect of using drones on CO2 emission, costs and social benefits by proposing a multi-objective mathematical model to assess sustainability in the last-mile delivery. A preemptive fuzzy goal programming approach to solve the model and measure the achievement degree of sustainability is conducted by using a numerical example to show the capability and usefulness of the suggested model, solution approach and, impact of drone technology in achieving all three aspects of sustainability. Findings The findings illustrate the achievement degree of sustainability in the delivery of blood based on locating distribution centers and allocating drones. Moreover, a comparison between drones and conventional vehicles is carried out to show the preference of using drones in reaching sustainability. A sensitivity analysis on aspects of sustainability and specifications of drone technology is conducted for validating the obtained results and distinguishing the most dominant aspect and parameters in enhancing the achievement degree of sustainability. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research has considered the assessment of sustainability in the last-mile delivery of blood supply chain with a focus on drone technology.

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Assesment of the potential of cargo bikes and electrification for last-mile parcel delivery by means of simulation of urban freight flows

European Transport Research Review ◽

10.1186/s12544-021-00491-5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Carlos Llorca ◽

Rolf Moeckel

Keyword(s):

Operating Time ◽

Low Noise ◽

Electricity Production ◽

Distribution Centers ◽

Agent Based ◽

Urban Freight ◽

Last Mile ◽

Last Mile Delivery ◽

Parcel Deliveries ◽

Motorized Vehicles

Abstract Background The paper presents a simulation model for freight. In the paper, this model is applied to understand the impacts of electric vans and cargo bikes for the last-mile delivery of parcels. Cargo bikes are electrically assisted vehicles that distribute parcels from micro depots located close to the final customers by means of short tours. The parcels are sent from the major distribution center to micro depots in vans (called feeders). Materials and methods An agent-based model is used for the purpose of the paper. The model is based on the disaggregation of commodity flows to represent trucks (for all commodities) and individual shipments (for parcel deliveries). The model represents microscopically every freight vehicle in the study area. Results The simulation of various scenarios with different shares of cargo bikes and electric vans assesses the impacts of electrification and cargo bikes. The use of cargo bikes to deliver parcels allows to reduce the number of motorized vehicles, although the presence of large parcels requires that at least half of deliveries by vans are still required. The shift to cargo bikes represents a slight increase in the total operating time to deliver the parcel demand. With low shares of cargo bikes, the total distance traveled increases, since the reduction of van tours cannot compensate the additional feeder trips from distribution centers to micro depots. The cargo bikes also do not reduce the number of vehicles for the served area, but modify the composition of vehicle types. Low noise, smaller, low emission vehicles increase, while delivery vans are reduced. Conclusion Both cargo bikes and electric vans are able to reduce CO2 emissions, even after accounting for the emissions related to electricity production.

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