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Section outline

  • SESSION 7: URBAN LOGISTICS AND PARCEL DISTRIBUTION

    Session Chair: Walid Klibi. KEDGE Business School & PI Builder Award 2018

    • Invited Presentations

    • Paper with presentation in this session

    • The concept of Hyperconnected City Logistics (HCL) suggests an open and shared system associate with multi-modes transportation to meet the challenges of City Logistics (CL). A new application of Parcel lockers is suggested in this paper which is to be used as transhipment hubs besides the current popular utilization as ship/reception lockers. Transhipment could be easily processed through parcel lockers rather than building new specific transfer hubs which are cost consumption and normally away from demand nodes. We formulate the model from the perspective of Pick-up and Delivery Problem with Transhipment and Time-Window (PDPTTW) and propose Combine Saving heuristic for solving the PDPTTW. The heuristics has been evaluated by a set of examples and show a good performance.

    • One of the main pillars of the Physical Internet (PI) is cooperation. One possible form of cooperation in freight transportation is bundling. As soon as bundling is in focus, we have to think about locations where this bundling might take place, which are, normally, hubs. So, the main idea would be that different freight carriers meet at a specific hub and exchange their freight according to some (clever) planning such that redundancies in trips are overcome. E.g., instead of two carriers serving regions A and B, they cooperate such that the first carrier only has to serve region A and the other one only has to serve area B. Even though the general idea is quite clear, details are sometimes more complicated. In this paper, potentials and dilemmas related to cooperative delivery models based on the observations made in selected Austrian case studies are outlined.

    • E-commerce has led to more small parcels being shipped between businesses in metropolitan and CBD areas. Courier routes in large metropolitan areas are inefficient due to the long stem distances and prevalence of courier companies only operating from a single depot.
      This paper presents a model for estimating the benefits in terms of reduced distances travelled by courier vans when a shared system utilising parcel lockers is used for CBD based deliveries. The model was used to predict the savings in distances travelled by courier vans when operating in a shared system utilising parcel lockers. Substantial savings in travel distances were estimated that would reduce vehicle operating costs as well as improving sustainability.

    • This paper discusses a shared mobility service that combines passenger and freight transport. Crowdshipping, in fact, implies delivering goods (freight) via the crowd (passengers). Any trip people perform to fulfil individual objectives can, in principle, be transformed shipping freight service too by using the free load capacity passengers have when moving from A to B. If widely developed this could provide a substantial contribution to reduce transport externalities by avoiding dedicated freight trips. This paper discusses both feasibility and behavioural issues with the intent of diffusing its deployment in urban areas. It does so by presenting some recent research advances related to the study of both demand (i.e. buyers) and supply (providers, i.e. crowdshippers) and discussing the main impacts this solution might have from an environmental and an economic point of view. In particular, it focuses on a particularly environmental-friendly crowdshipping service. The service considered assumes using a city mass transit network where customers/crowdshippers pick-up/drop-off goods via automated parcel lockers located either inside the transit stations or in their surroundings. Crowdshipping can play a crucial role in relieving cities from transport-related negative externalities by promoting the sharing economy and Physical Internet paradigm aiming for a shared, hyper connected, sustainable and efficient last-mile logistics.

    • To bridge the gap between the long(er) term Physical Internet vision and the short term daily logistics operations, the Dutch Topsector Logistics (TKI Dinalog and NWO) requested a research project that would provide an impulse for self-organizing logistics. This contribution discusses the development of the research project SOLiD, Self-Organizing Logistics in Distribution, that answers to that request. First of all, we describe the design and developments of SOLiD by discussing the challenges in the parcel industry and how these could benefit from implementing solutions that relate to a more self-organizing logistics system. Next, the first results of SOLiD’s experiments are presented. The experiments under consideration focus on dynamic planning and adding local intelligence to reduce handling activities. Lastly, we describe how autonomous sorting robots can be a means to achieve a more self-organizing logistics system. This paper provides new insights with respect to the considerations of designing, and the execution of practical experiments for implementing SOL as a step towards realizing the Physical Internet and make it more concrete for logistics industry.