EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

2752. Simulation and evaluation of sustainability impacts of last mile delivery consolidation

Invited abstract in session TC-56: Last-Mile Delivery, stream Vehicle Routing and Logistics.

Tuesday, 12:30-14:00
Room: Liberty 1.11

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Christopher Bayliss
School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Portsmouth
2. Djamila Ouelhadj
Maths, University of Portsmouth
3. Andrew bullock
School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Portsmouth
4. Graham Wall
Department of Mathematics, University of Portsmouth
5. Mohanad AL-Behadili
School of Mathematics and Physics, university of portsmouth
6. Graham Fletcher
University of Portsmouth

Abstract

Consolidation in parcel delivery operations refers to the process of assigning delivery routes to many parcels such that delivery costs are minimised, as well as pollution and congestion. Consolidation can be achieved by grouping parcels with common destinations together at some location. Consolidation can be performed at: parcel lockers (reducing number of final delivery locations); delivery vehicles (shared usage for reduced empty vehicles miles); kerbside (where groups of parcels are transferred to smaller more sustainable vehicles); and urban consolidation centres (a third party who take on the responsibility of last mile delivery for any number of carriers). This work proposes heuristic routing algorithms for simulating these consolidation strategies. A multi-modal two-echelon location routing heuristic is introduced for simulating the urban consolidation centre and shared vehicle usage strategies. A local search based algorithm is introduced for simulating the kerbside consolidation strategy. The performance of the location-routing algorithm is validated relative to an exact MIP formulation. Experiment results, based on city sized instances, are presented to illustrate the relative merits of each consolidation strategy and different last-mile mode choices. Additionally, in collaboration with the DfT funded Solent Future Transport Zone project, we analyse cost, pollution and social impacts of placing consolidation centres at a range of candidate locations.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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