Abstract
With the rise of city logistics (CL) problems in the last three decades, various methods, approaches, solutions, and initiatives were analyzed and proposed for making logistics in urban areas more sustainable. The most analyzed and promising solutions are those that take into account cooperation among logistics providers and consolidation of the flow of goods. Furthermore, technological innovations enable the implementation of modern vehicles/equipment in order to make CL solutions sustainable. For several years, drone-based delivery has attracted lots of attention in scientific research, but there is a serious gap in the literature regarding the application of drones in CL concepts. The goal of this paper is to analyze four CL concepts that differ in consolidation type, transformation degree of flow of goods (direct and indirect, multi-echelon flows), and the role of drones. Two of the analyzed concepts are novel, which is the main contribution of the paper. The performances of the analyzed concepts are compared to the performances of the traditional delivery model – using only trucks without prior flow consolidation. The results indicate that CL concepts which combine different consolidation models and drones in the last phase of the delivery could stand out as a sustainable CL solution.
Highlights
Structural changes in the flow of goods, caused by globalization, the growth of e-commerce volumes, demographic changes, emerging technologies and business patterns, etc., are forcing the logistics sector to adapt to the development trends of cities and society in general [1]
city logistics (CL) initiatives can be structured according to different criteria, and for this paper, the CL initiatives that refer to cooperation and consolidation of the flow of goods through a logistics center in urban areas are of particular interest
Overall delivery completion time is comprised of the travelling times of ground vehicles and drones, the duration of transhipment in logistics centers, the time needed for flow consolidation and the customer serving time, and it represents the time needed for the completion of all deliveries
Summary
Structural changes in the flow of goods, caused by globalization, the growth of e-commerce volumes, demographic changes, emerging technologies and business patterns, etc., are forcing the logistics sector to adapt to the development trends of cities and society in general [1]. The consequence of the abovementioned is the growth in home-delivery demands, the increase of delivery frequency and the reduction of delivery size, the emergence of personalized consumption patterns, and the production of individualized articles [6] These changes greatly affected the performances of the logistics systems, forcing them to change and adapt. The goal is to analyze the influence of CL concepts (based on the initiatives of cooperation, flow consolidation, and the application of drones in goods delivery) on CL performances. The performances of the analyzed concepts are compared with the performances of the traditional delivery model using only ground vehicles, without previous flow consolidation Another contribution of the paper is the consideration of a wider set of the CL performances. The following section presents a short literature review regarding the analysis of the initiatives of cooperation, consolidation, micro-consolidation, and drones in goods delivery.
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