Project Details
Projekt
E-Fulfillment for Attended Last-Mile Delivery Services in Metropolitan Areas
Subject Area
Accounting and Finance
Term
from 2015 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 277537858
With two-digit growth rates predicted for e-commerce revenues, reliable, sustainable, and profitable delivery services gain importance. The proposed project focuses on the planning of attended last-mile delivery services. As the customer has to be present for order delivery, a service time window has to be agreed upon already when the order is accepted. The time of order delivery is frequently the sole physical contact between e-commerce supplier and customer. Therefore, this event is decisive with regard to customer satisfaction and perceived product quality. History shows: When delivery services are not realized in an efficient and customer-oriented manner, the underlying business model is not competitive.Particularly in metropolitan areas, logistics service providers have to rise to the challenge of successfully planning attended last-mile delivery services considering uncertain demand and traffic conditions. In metropolitan areas, the high population density offers great potential for e-commerce, while the varying traffic conditions increase uncertainty of delivery. Many customers ask for tight service time windows and punctual deliveries, but tight service time windows significantly reduce the provider's planning degrees of freedom. They also lead to increased delivery costs or to reduced reliability in an environment determined by high competitive pressure and low profit margins.The proposed project considers service time windows as a scarce resource and as the critical interface between order capture and order delivery. Our research objective is to extend tactical and operational planning for e-fulfillment optimally utilizing this scarce resource. To this end, we will combine methods from revenue management with methods from vehicle routing.First, the research project will investigate the factors that significantly affect the planning and management of delivery services in metropolitan areas. Next, we will examine how to predict characteristics of future orders such as order value, time window choice, and delivery location based on historical data as to anticipate future delivery capacity. This predictive analysis will enable value-based planning and management of service time windows and their availability. Our focus is on the conditions and effects of different degrees of integration between the previously separate planning tasks of order capture and order delivery. What type of information has to be aggregated and exchanged in which way? How does the quantity and quality of information affect the success of integrated planning? How do planning methods need to be extended for an integrated solution?In the pursuit of our research objectives, we will extend and combine two research strains based on a joint simulation system. We aim to develop new and extended approaches to profitable, customer-oriented, and sustainable e-fulfillment through extended methods of value-oriented order capture and order delivery.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
United Kingdom
