Abstract
Ordering food through mobile apps and crowdsourcing resources has become increasingly popular in the digital age. Restaurants can improve customer satisfaction to satisfy on-demand food orders by shortening waiting time and achieving sustainability through fuel reduction. In the present study, we construct a double-layer scheduling model, which is developed using the characteristics of on-demand food preparation, including the use of multiple stoves, a variety of dishes in one order, and the integration of the same dishes from different customers. The bottom layer is a multi-stove dish package scheduling model based on parallel machine scheduling. The upper layer is an order selection model based on the knapsack problem. To identify the optimal solution, four strategies for calculating the weight coefficient of the dish package are proposed to shorten the waiting time and realize sustainability. Numerical experiments are designed to analyze the differences of the final scheduling results under the four strategies. The bottom layer is extended to another model based on the vehicle routing optimization model, given the switch time between different dishes. The extension of the model is also compared in the numerical experiments. Our paper confirms the necessity of using a double-layer model for multi-strategy comparison in order to achieve sustainable on-demand scheduling.
Highlights
The digital age has brought a qualitative breakthrough to the restaurant industry with the development of a catering takeaway platform
We found a similarity between the dish-package scheduling model and the vehicle routing optimization (VRP) model when switch time is considered
The present paper aims to improve meal cooking efficiency in the on-demand food delivery industry
Summary
The digital age has brought a qualitative breakthrough to the restaurant industry with the development of a catering takeaway platform. Fast-developing platforms extend the service scope and add potential customers to the catering enterprises These apps increase the business space of restaurants and, given the increasing number of competitors, elevate operation efficiency. Improving the speed of meal scheduling while controlling the quality of food can reduce idle time in stove processing and the waiting time of distribution couriers. The restaurant needs to receive the order in time and schedule the preparation of dishes. To ensure the speed of distribution and sufficient capacity, the takeout platforms are devoted to finding an appropriate reward system These efforts contribute to the efficient capacity of the delivery process. Each order includes different dishes at varying quantities, each with an expected completion time according to the arrival of courier and the distance between the restaurant and customer. A conclusion that summarizes the main findings and future research directions are presented
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