Physical Internet (PI) and city logistics are two novel concepts aiming
to render more economically, environmentally and socially efficient and
sustainable the way, in which physical objects are transported, handled,
stored, realized, supplied and used throughout the world. City
logistics is a key enabler to city economy, which has been introduced to
cope with the challenges of sustainable cohabitation and development of
freight transportation in the city. In the city logistics operation,
bulky goods delivery is big challenge since it is difficult to delivery
in the “last 100 meters” in the city. This research has been motivated
by real-life problem faced by our collaborating company, which is
specialized in customized furniture. Following characteristics of
customized furniture industry create lots of problems to delivery
service providers. In order to mitigate these impacts, the model of
Physical Internet enabled Bulky Goods City Logistics (PI-BGCL) is
proposed. The meta-heuristic algorithm (Genetic algorithm) has been
applied to compare the traditional delivery model and proposed PI-BGCL
model. To validate the effect and efficiency of proposed PI-BGCL model,
the case study in this paper consists of two parts. The first one is a
real-life case study of a customized furniture industry in China, which
demonstrates the efficiency and feasibility of the proposed mode. The
second one is to validate the effectiveness of proposed algorithms.
Experimental design and a set of sensitivity analyses was performed to
examine the effects of several key parameters on system performance.