Abstract
This paper focuses on optimisation issue in designing urban logistics network for joint delivery alliances in parcel delivery industry, explicitly taking into account heterogeneous fleet and practices of joint delivery alliances in China. The objective is to determine the set of Intermediate Depots (IDs) to open and the allocation of city logistics terminals to minimise a total cost comprised of the set-up costs of IDs and the total variable cost of routes under joint delivery. A powerful cooperative approximation heuristic algorithm is developed and a comparative analysis is performed with three published approaches based on the well-known benchmark instances in this field. The results suggest that the proposed method can find good solutions in a reasonable amount of time for most data-sets. The proposed method has also been successfully applied to an industrial case for a joint delivery alliance in Chongqing, China. Comprehensively analysis are conducted between joint delivery and separate delivery, heterogeneous and homogeneous fleets, considering the carbon emissions or not, and demand variations.
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