Project R-11233

Improving logistics performance in e-commerce by integrating warehouse and delivery operations (Research)

Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sales are booming. At the same time, customers expect a fast and accurate delivery. Meeting these expectations at low cost, requires excellent logistics performance. In this context, integrating operational decisions (e.g., taking warehouse and delivery decisions simultaneously) can be seen as one of the key opportunities for improvement. Typically, predefined deadlines are used to separate order picking activities in the warehouse (i.e., retrieving goods from their storage locations) from delivery operations to customer locations, allowing both activities to be scheduled independently. Previous studies have shown the large potential benefit of integrating both scheduling problems in limited settings. However, it is unclear how both problems can be integrated, and what the benefits are in more realistic and dynamic settings. Therefore, the main objective of this project is to develop adequate models and algorithms to support integrated decision making in a realistic and dynamic setting, and to analyse the benefit of integrated decision making under different problem characteristics. As such, the project will provide new tools and insights to deal with current and future challenges in B2C e-commerce. Additionally, the project contributes to the operations research community in general by providing innovative algorithms and new insights on how related decision making problems interact and can be solved efficiently in an integrated manner.

01 November 2020 - 31 October 2022