IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tjorxx/v69y2018i1p127-141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Package consolidation approach to the split-order fulfillment problem of online supermarkets

Author

Listed:
  • Yuankai Zhang
  • Minfang Huang
  • Xiangpei Hu
  • Lijun Sun

Abstract

The split-order fulfillment problem has been a new key issue for online supermarkets. Multi-item orders to be fulfilled by multiple warehouses are split into several suborders and delivered with multiple shipments, increasing transportation cost. This paper presents a powerful order fulfillment method—package consolidation—in which two or more stock-keeping units (SKUs) in the suborders of one order will be packed into fewer packages through lateral transshipment. We propose a consolidation model and a packing model to determine which SKUs in suborders should be transshipped for package consolidation. In addition, we develop a modified first fit decreasing (FFD) algorithm to solve the packing model and a heuristic algorithm based on the breadth-first search strategy with cutting, long-sight and suborder rules to generate near optimal order fulfillment schemes in a reasonable time. The computation results verify the superiority of the package consolidation approach in solving split-order fulfillment problem. Moreover, our sensitivity analyses provide managerial insights for online supermarkets.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuankai Zhang & Minfang Huang & Xiangpei Hu & Lijun Sun, 2018. "Package consolidation approach to the split-order fulfillment problem of online supermarkets," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 69(1), pages 127-141, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tjorxx:v:69:y:2018:i:1:p:127-141
    DOI: 10.1057/s41274-017-0230-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/s41274-017-0230-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41274-017-0230-7?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Zhu, Shan & Hu, Xiangpei & Huang, Kai & Yuan, Yufei, 2021. "Optimization of product category allocation in multiple warehouses to minimize splitting of online supermarket customer orders," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 290(2), pages 556-571.
    2. Zhang, Yuankai & Sun, Lijun & Hu, Xiangpei & Zhao, Chen, 2019. "Order consolidation for the last-mile split delivery in online retailing," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 309-327.
    3. Zhang, Yuankai & Lin, Wei-Hua & Huang, Minfang & Hu, Xiangpei, 2021. "Multi-warehouse package consolidation for split orders in online retailing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 289(3), pages 1040-1055.
    4. Yajun Zhan & Yiping Jiang, 2022. "Integrated Optimization of Order Allocation and Last-Mile Multi-Temperature Joint Distribution for Fresh Agriproduct Community Retail," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-18, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:tjorxx:v:69:y:2018:i:1:p:127-141. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tjor .

    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.