Title:
Optimising Product Swaps in Urban Retail Networks
Optimising Product Swaps in Urban Retail Networks
Author(s)
Zhang, Joyce
Thompson, Russell G.
Thompson, Russell G.
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Abstract
The Physical Internet (PI) and City Logistics is based on trying to achieve higher levels of consolidation on vehicles that typically requires exchanging loads at intermediate locations. A common problem in urban areas in swapping goods between retail stores where there is a small amount of goods moving between individual stores to satisfy customer requirements where there are stock shortages at some locations. This type of network is also common for deliveries between local post offices or B2B networks particularly with parcel lockers. Such networks are characterised by having multiple common origins and destinations requiring services operating from many to many locations. A number of performance measures can be considered for such networks including number of vehicles operated and distance travelled, service levels/reliability for customers, network efficiency, vehicle load factors and the number of times tasks/consignments are transferred between vehicles.
This paper describes how networks for exchanging goods between stores can be designed using multi-objective optimisation modelling. A mathematical program has been formulated to include multiple objectives, namely vehicle operating costs, vehicle usage (number of vehicles used), labour costs (proportional to working time) and unreliability costs. Constraints considered include, vehicle capacity, unloading dock capacity and storage capacity. Decision variables are the vehicle routes with loads as well as waiting times at nodes. Coordination of transfers at customer considers vehicle-to-vehicle parcel transfer. Pareto optimal solutions for a small network are presented. A discussion of various solution procedures will be outlined.
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Date Issued
2021-06
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Text
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Paper