Evaluation of a Team-Based Collection and Delivery Operation

Abstract

The rise in the volume of e-commerce is adding increasing pressure on the logistics of parcel delivery. To improve the efficiency of their operations, the parcel industry in Japan is exploring team-based collection and delivery (TCD), whereby the sales driver (SD) hands out parcels to the field crews (FC), who subsequently deliver them to the door. However, the efficiency of TCD is still understudied. This study proposes a method for optimizing the delivery route for TCD and evaluates the efficiency of the ongoing operation. The TCD delivery problem focuses on minimizing the task completion time using parameters derived through surveys of the actual operations. Comparison between seven different methods show that the newly proposed method of fuzzy c-means clustering with a genetic algorithm outperforms the rest, rapidly computing sufficiently accurate results. Results suggest that the proposed optimal route reduces the total delivery time by up to 18.7%. However, the amount of time saved varies considerably by the area and the number of parcels delivered. Additional constraints for improving driver safety, the cost-benefit of increasing FCs, and the impact on the environmental cost are also considered. The proposed method also helps spread the workload and the travel time of the FCs more evenly, thus further reducing the total delivery time.