Abstract
This paper investigates stochastic scheduling and routing problems in the online meal delivery (OMD) service. The huge increase in meal delivery demand requires the service providers to construct a highly efficient logistics network to deal with a large-volume of time-sensitive and fluctuating fulfillment, often using inhouse and crowdsourced drivers to secure the ambitious service quality. We aim to address the problem of developping an effective scheduling and routing policy that can handle real-life situations. To this end, we first model the dynamic problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and analyze the structural properties of the optimal policy. Then we propose four integrated approaches to solve the operational level scheduling and routing problem. In addition, we provide a continuous approximation formula to estimate the bounds of required fleet size for the inhouse drivers. Numerical experiments based on a real dataset show the effectiveness of the proposed solution approaches. We also obtain several managerial insights that can help decision makers in solving similar resource allocation problems in real-time.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callSimilar Papers
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
