IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v307y2023i1p140-156.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Community logistics and dynamic community partitioning: A new approach for solving e-commerce last mile delivery

Author

Listed:
  • Ouyang, Zhiyuan
  • Leung, Eric K.H.
  • Huang, George Q.

Abstract

Last mile delivery shows an increasingly tough challenge for logistics service providers due to the rapidly expanding e-commerce sales around the globe. To ease the implementation of last mile delivery, an effective delivery strategy is to predetermine the service regions of vehicles before optimizing their delivery routes. On this ground, this paper proposes a new delivery strategy named Community Logistics (CL) to generate vehicle service region and departure time dynamically. Through adopting this new delivery strategy, we transform the original last mile delivery to a new type of research problem, namely dynamic community partitioning problem (DCPP), with an aim to strike a balance between vehicle service region range, order delay time and vehicle capacity usage based on the real-time order arrivals and vehicle availability status. We present a Markov decision process (MDP) model for the DCPP and develop a heuristic solution approach to solve this MDP model. Numerical results demonstrate significant benefits of the proposed solution framework and delivery strategy.

Suggested Citation

  • Ouyang, Zhiyuan & Leung, Eric K.H. & Huang, George Q., 2023. "Community logistics and dynamic community partitioning: A new approach for solving e-commerce last mile delivery," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(1), pages 140-156.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:307:y:2023:i:1:p:140-156
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2022.08.029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221722006725
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2022.08.029?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pillac, Victor & Gendreau, Michel & Guéret, Christelle & Medaglia, Andrés L., 2013. "A review of dynamic vehicle routing problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 225(1), pages 1-11.
    2. Michel Gendreau & Alain Hertz & Gilbert Laporte, 1994. "A Tabu Search Heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(10), pages 1276-1290, October.
    3. Mathias A. Klapp & Alan L. Erera & Alejandro Toriello, 2018. "The One-Dimensional Dynamic Dispatch Waves Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(2), pages 402-415, March.
    4. Jörg Kalcsics, 2015. "Districting Problems," Springer Books, in: Gilbert Laporte & Stefan Nickel & Francisco Saldanha da Gama (ed.), Location Science, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 595-622, Springer.
    5. Stacy A. Voccia & Ann Melissa Campbell & Barrett W. Thomas, 2019. "The Same-Day Delivery Problem for Online Purchases," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(1), pages 167-184, February.
    6. John Gunnar Carlsson, 2012. "Dividing a Territory Among Several Vehicles," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 565-577, November.
    7. Hai Wang, 2019. "Routing and Scheduling for a Last-Mile Transportation System," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(1), pages 131-147, February.
    8. Hintsch, Timo & Irnich, Stefan, 2018. "Large multiple neighborhood search for the clustered vehicle-routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 270(1), pages 118-131.
    9. Laporte, Gilbert, 1992. "The traveling salesman problem: An overview of exact and approximate algorithms," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 231-247, June.
    10. Nabila Azi & Michel Gendreau & Jean-Yves Potvin, 2012. "A dynamic vehicle routing problem with multiple delivery routes," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 199(1), pages 103-112, October.
    11. Marlin W. Ulmer & Barrett W. Thomas & Dirk C. Mattfeld, 2019. "Preemptive depot returns for dynamic same-day delivery," EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 8(4), pages 327-361, December.
    12. Hsieh, Ling-Feng & Huang, Yi-Chen, 2011. "New batch construction heuristics to optimise the performance of order picking systems," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(2), pages 618-630, June.
    13. Zhou, Lin & Zhen, Lu & Baldacci, Roberto & Boschetti, Marco & Dai, Ying & Lim, Andrew, 2021. "A Heuristic Algorithm for solving a large-scale real-world territory design problem," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Mai, Feng & Fry, Michael J. & Ohlmann, Jeffrey W., 2018. "Model-based capacitated clustering with posterior regularization," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 271(2), pages 594-605.
    15. Marlin W. Ulmer & Dirk C. Mattfeld & Felix Köster, 2018. "Budgeting Time for Dynamic Vehicle Routing with Stochastic Customer Requests," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 20-37, January.
    16. Serap Ercan Comert & Harun Resit Yazgan & Sena Kır & Furkan Yener, 2018. "A cluster first-route second approach for a capacitated vehicle routing problem: a case study," International Journal of Procurement Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 11(4), pages 399-419.
    17. Matthias Winkenbach & Paul R. Kleindorfer & Stefan Spinler, 2016. "Enabling Urban Logistics Services at La Poste through Multi-Echelon Location-Routing," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(2), pages 520-540, May.
    18. Mourão, Maria Cândida & Nunes, Ana Catarina & Prins, Christian, 2009. "Heuristic methods for the sectoring arc routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 196(3), pages 856-868, August.
    19. John Gunnar Carlsson & Erick Delage, 2013. "Robust Partitioning for Stochastic Multivehicle Routing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 61(3), pages 727-744, June.
    20. Bender, Matthias & Kalcsics, Jörg & Meyer, Anne, 2020. "Districting for parcel delivery services – A two-Stage solution approach and a real-World case study," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    21. B. L. Hollis & P. J. Green, 2012. "Real-Life Vehicle Routing With Time Windows For Visual Attractiveness And Operational Robustness," Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 29(04), pages 1-29.
    22. Maria Battarra & Güneş Erdoğan & Daniele Vigo, 2014. "Exact Algorithms for the Clustered Vehicle Routing Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 58-71, February.
    23. Hintsch, Timo & Irnich, Stefan, 2020. "Exact solution of the soft-clustered vehicle-routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 280(1), pages 164-178.
    24. Marlin W. Ulmer & Justin C. Goodson & Dirk C. Mattfeld & Marco Hennig, 2019. "Offline–Online Approximate Dynamic Programming for Dynamic Vehicle Routing with Stochastic Requests," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(1), pages 185-202, February.
    25. Billy E. Gillett & Leland R. Miller, 1974. "A Heuristic Algorithm for the Vehicle-Dispatch Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(2), pages 340-349, April.
    26. Martin Savelsbergh & Tom Van Woensel, 2016. "50th Anniversary Invited Article—City Logistics: Challenges and Opportunities," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(2), pages 579-590, May.
    27. Huang, Yixiao & Savelsbergh, Martin & Zhao, Lei, 2018. "Designing logistics systems for home delivery in densely populated urban areas," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 95-125.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Senna, Fernando & Coelho, Leandro C. & Morabito, Reinaldo & Munari, Pedro, 2024. "An exact method for a last-mile delivery routing problem with multiple deliverymen," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 317(2), pages 550-562.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ouyang, Zhiyuan & Leung, Eric Ka Ho & Huang, George Q., 2022. "Community logistics for dynamic vehicle dispatching: The effects of community departure “time” and “space”," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    2. Zhang, Jian & Woensel, Tom Van, 2023. "Dynamic vehicle routing with random requests: A literature review," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    3. Fleckenstein, David & Klein, Robert & Steinhardt, Claudius, 2023. "Recent advances in integrating demand management and vehicle routing: A methodological review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 499-518.
    4. Zhang, Jian & Luo, Kelin & Florio, Alexandre M. & Van Woensel, Tom, 2023. "Solving large-scale dynamic vehicle routing problems with stochastic requests," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 596-614.
    5. Nils Boysen & Stefan Fedtke & Stefan Schwerdfeger, 2021. "Last-mile delivery concepts: a survey from an operational research perspective," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 43(1), pages 1-58, March.
    6. Klapp, Mathias A. & Erera, Alan L. & Toriello, Alejandro, 2020. "Request acceptance in same-day delivery," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    7. Klein, Vienna & Steinhardt, Claudius, 2023. "Dynamic demand management and online tour planning for same-day delivery," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(2), pages 860-886.
    8. Auad, Ramon & Erera, Alan & Savelsbergh, Martin, 2023. "Courier satisfaction in rapid delivery systems using dynamic operating regions," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    9. Côté, Jean-François & Alves de Queiroz, Thiago & Gallesi, Francesco & Iori, Manuel, 2023. "A branch-and-regret algorithm for the same-day delivery problem," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    10. Ritzinger, Ulrike & Puchinger, Jakob & Rudloff, Christian & Hartl, Richard F., 2022. "Comparison of anticipatory algorithms for a dial-a-ride problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 301(2), pages 591-608.
    11. Banerjee, Dipayan & Erera, Alan L. & Stroh, Alexander M. & Toriello, Alejandro, 2023. "Who has access to e-commerce and when? Time-varying service regions in same-day delivery," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 148-168.
    12. Soeffker, Ninja & Ulmer, Marlin W. & Mattfeld, Dirk C., 2022. "Stochastic dynamic vehicle routing in the light of prescriptive analytics: A review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(3), pages 801-820.
    13. Stacy A. Voccia & Ann Melissa Campbell & Barrett W. Thomas, 2019. "The Same-Day Delivery Problem for Online Purchases," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(1), pages 167-184, February.
    14. Zhen, Lu & Gao, Jiajing & Tan, Zheyi & Laporte, Gilbert & Baldacci, Roberto, 2023. "Territorial design for customers with demand frequency," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(1), pages 82-101.
    15. Chen, Xinwei & Ulmer, Marlin W. & Thomas, Barrett W., 2022. "Deep Q-learning for same-day delivery with vehicles and drones," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(3), pages 939-952.
    16. Snoeck, André & Winkenbach, Matthias & Fransoo, Jan C., 2023. "On-demand last-mile distribution network design with omnichannel inventory," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    17. Snoeck, André & Winkenbach, Matthias & Fransoo, Jan C., 2023. "On-demand last-mile distribution network design with omnichannel inventory," Other publications TiSEM 83b06c9f-2a65-4aaf-880b-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Vidal, Thibaut & Laporte, Gilbert & Matl, Piotr, 2020. "A concise guide to existing and emerging vehicle routing problem variants," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(2), pages 401-416.
    19. Liu, Zeyu & Li, Xueping & Khojandi, Anahita, 2022. "The flying sidekick traveling salesman problem with stochastic travel time: A reinforcement learning approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    20. Chen, Xinwei & Wang, Tong & Thomas, Barrett W. & Ulmer, Marlin W., 2023. "Same-day delivery with fair customer service," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(2), pages 738-751.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:307:y:2023:i:1:p:140-156. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.