EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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2948. Optimising Crowd-shipping With Parcel Lockers for Last-Mile Delivery

Invited abstract in session WA-64: Last-Mile Delivery, stream VeRoLog - Vehicle Routing and Logistics.

Wednesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: S16 (building: 101)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Mina Akbarpour
Department of Technology, Management and Economics, Technical University of Denmark
2. Stefan Ropke
Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark
3. Yu Jiang
Department of Technology, Management and Economics
4. Otto Anker Nielsen
DTU

Abstract

The importance of increasing efficiency and capacity for last-mile delivery prompts e-commerce companies to explore alternative solutions, including the adoption of parcel lockers and leveraging crowd-shipping platforms. This study develops a holistic framework for optimising a parcel locker-based crowd-shipping system assisting the courier company’s last-mile delivery. Our approach covers various aspects for operating such a system, including identifying the optimal locker locations, considering customers’ stochastic choices in the delivery locations, and accounting for uncertainties in demand and crowd-shippers’ availability. The proposed two-phase approach integrates generated locations improved by simulated annealing with a simulation-based mixed integer linear programming model for matching delivery tasks and optimizing vehicle routing. Specifically, once the locker locations are identified, a simulation-based approach is employed to determine the stochastic choices made by customers and their corresponding delivery tasks. The model then matches these tasks with either available crowd-shippers or the courier’s own delivery vehicles, subsequently devising the most efficient routes for these delivery vehicles. Finally, the model is evaluated using last-mile delivery data from a region in Copenhagen. Our results highlight how the use of a parcel locker-based crowd-shipping system can enhance the efficiency of delivery operations for the courier company.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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