Sustainable local pickup and delivery: The case of Paris

Abstract

The two-echelon distribution networks are very common in last-mile supply chains and urban logistics systems. The problem consists of delivering goods from one depot to a set of satellites and from there to a group of customers. The most common problem is known as the two-echelon vehicle routing problem (2E-VRP), which is known to be computationally difficult to solve. In real-life, uncertainty in travel times increases this complexity to actually define a delivery schedule. To deal with this stochastic behavior, this paper proposes a solution approach based on a combination of simulation and optimization, named simheuristic, to solve the 2E-VRP with stochastic travel times. The model also considers the CO2 equivalent and fine particles emissions. Experiments are run using real data of a French delivery company for the city of Paris. The performance of two scenarios for freight delivering is evaluated, and the results show that a global optimum gives better results than local optima. Policy makers need to take this into account when defining city policy on freight transport.