Parcel Delivery Research Articles

Determining the optimal parcel delivery method using one drone and one truck

Delivering parcels using a combination of drones and trucks represents a promising new package delivery method. In previous studies, several truck/drone delivery planning problems and their solutions have been proposed. However, little research has been done to determine which delivery method is most appropriate. The reason for this is that it is difficult to obtain an exact solution for such problems, and thus the accuracy of the solutions is an issue. In this study, we propose an accurate solution procedure for the flying sidekick travelling salesman problem (FSTSP) and the parallel drone scheduling travelling salesman problem (PDSTSP), and establish which delivery method is most suitable based on the solutions obtained.

Modeling Relations Between Companies and CEP Service Providers in an Agent-Based Demand Model using Open-Source Data

Growing e-commerce activities cause an equally rapid rise in demand for courier, express, and parcel (CEP) transportation, resulting in increased emissions and substantial strain on the road infrastructure, especially in urban areas. Therefore, transportation planners investigate the potential of alternative concepts for parcel and freight transport. Commonly freight demand models are used, however, current models for CEP-based transportation typically focus on private parcel demand. In this paper, we extend the integrated agent-based model logiTopp of last-mile parcel delivery and private travel demand by introducing company agents and, consequently, first-mile deliveries. We present a concept for modeling (the number of) relations between companies and carriers, as these relations highly influence the resulting travel demand in the survey area. Along with implementation techniques, we provide a greedy algorithm to estimate these carrier relations, which takes carrier market shares, customer parcel demand, and carrier capacity into account. All developed model components are solely based on open-source data.

МОДЕЛЬ СОГЛАСОВАННОГО ГРУППОВОГО ПРЕСЛЕДОВАНИЯ С РАСПРЕДЕЛЕНИЕМ ПО ЦЕЛЯМ

The article considers the problems of modeling a table with a set of competing parties and a group pursuit of multiple targets. Each table cell represents a structural variable containing data about the predicted time required for an ith pursuer to reach a jth target. For each finite set of pursuer’s distribution by targets, the minimum time value of the pursuer’s reaching the target is selected out of all permissible max-imum ones. Upon analyzing the problems based on the models of real-world objects movements, the author suggests using them for simulation modeling, virtual modeling of game processes, and transport logistics, as well as for developing virtual reality models for parcel delivery performed by drones using a hub-network.

Innovative package delivery possibilities in Slovakia

The use of newly created technologies in all areas of business is becoming an increasingly important factor for the competitiveness of the company. With the rapid growing number of orders via e-shops and demanding customer requirements, even delivery services are forced to keep up with the times and not be afraid to implement innovative technologies and systems in their processes. New delivery options, such as delivery using drones or autonomous vehicles, are starting to come to the fore in the field of parcel delivery by postal operators around the world. This brings with it not only possible benefits, but also obstacles that companies must solve. However, for the successful implementation of such technologies, it is necessary to understand the behavior and requirements of potential customers, who have different opinions on the issue and may have respect and fear towards adopting innovations. The paper defines the basic characteristics of drone and autonomous vehicle delivery options. The aim of the paper is to create primary research focused on finding out the awareness and opinion of customers of postal operators in Slovakia regarding innovative package delivery options and their readiness to accept new components.

Implementation of disruptive technologies for the last mile delivery efficiency achievement

The last mile delivery (LMD) is one of the most tangled procedures in logistics. The reason is that it involves various uncertainties, including weather and road conditions, traffic hours and route selection, car accidents, delivery vehicle anomalies, at the same time needing to avoid parcel damages and delivery errors, while communicating with the recipient of the parcel. Above-mentioned factors cause the difficulties of successful parcels delivery to customers' doorsteps. Therefore, businesses need to search for technology solutions that will enable increase of last mile delivery efficiency. All intelligent solutions are built upon big data, as huge volumes of data allow the prediction of future behavior based on historical knowledge. In this study we propose a last-mile solution where the combination of disruptive technologies allow a better distribution without costs increasing.

A study on handwritten parcel delivery invoice understanding model

A study on handwritten parcel delivery invoice understanding model

The impact of policy response to Covid-19 on the transportation and storage sector in Visegrad Countries (V4)

The paper is devoted to analysing national policy responses to the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Visegrad countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) - on both the macroeconomic and microeconomic level. Focus is given to the transportation and storage sector (NACE Rev. 2 code H). The pandemic unevenly impacted this sector: while specific subsectors were thriving during this period (e.g. parcel delivery services), others were suffering due to abrupt mobility changes (e.g. public & individual mobility services). Public policies were presented not only as a tool to reduce the negative impact of the pandemic but also to provide a platform to build new competitive advantages for national business entities, thus providing the rationale for an analysis of the actual impact of programs aimed at the transportation and storage sector. The impact of the state-aid focusing on the analysed was uneven between the analysed countries. Even though, the deployed programs have helped the industry to return to pre-pandemic levels within 4 quarters. This proves that apart from the structure of state-aid programs and schemes, an important factor was the pre-pandemic value chains. This could serve as a starting point for further research as more data become available.

라인밸런스 방법론을 적용한 제화물류의 B2C 프로세스 효율화 방안에 대한 연구

According to the Korea Integrated Logistics Association, domestic parcel delivery volume reached 3.63 billion units last year, and 3.37 billion units in 2020, an increase of 7.6% from the previous year. The importance of online (B2C) logistics is also increasing as the online market grows so fast that it exceeds that of offline stores every year.
 In particular, the shoemaking industry is trying to achieve efficient logistics business through Third Party Logistics (3PL) rather than own logistics. However, unlike general industrial products, it is not easy to achieve optimization of logistics operation personnel through automated facilities or systems. This is because, due to the nature of the shoe industry, there are areas of work that require handwriting for product management and accurate shipment according to complex part numbers, and there are limitations in system development costs and huge infrastructure investment. In particular, as the number of companies operating the online shoe business increases, the demand for 3PL fulfillment service is also increasing. In addition, in the shoe industry, where individual shipments per item are high, the storage function is an important factor due to the packaging accuracy of skilled workers who require expertise and the nature of products that must be depleted by the third year of manufacture.
 Therefore, this study tried to study the online logistics process efficiency by applying the ‘Line Balance methodology’ to vitalize the online channel in the domestic shoe market. In other words, by examining the A-B-C work process of the shoe distribution center, the ‘line balance methodology’ is applied to determine whether the balance of work time required for each process is balanced and operated efficiently, and what is the improvement plan. Time was applied in a balanced way to study ways to increase work productivity.
 In particular, this study is meaningful in that it compares and studies that the required time for each process is applied in a balanced way through line balancing of the logistics center for the activation of online channels in the shoe industry, focusing on the case of Company A, thereby increasing work productivity. have. In addition, although papers related to the existing online channel mainly discuss ways to improve the overall logistics service quality, this study focuses on the case of Company A and studies the method of increasing work productivity of the online channel through the ‘line balance methodology’. There is significance and differentiation in what has been done.

Gusts Encountered by Flying Vehicles in Proximity to Buildings

There is a growing desire to operate Uncrewed Air Vehicles (UAVs) in urban environments for parcel delivery, and passenger-carrying air taxis for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). The turbulent flows and gusts around buildings and other urban infrastructure can affect the steadiness and stability of such air vehicles by generating a highly transient relative flow field. Our aim is to review existing gust models, then consider gust encounters in the vicinity of buildings as experienced by flight trajectories over the roof of a nominally cuboid building in a suburban atmospheric boundary layer. Simplified models of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft are used to illustrate the changes in lift and thrust experienced by flight around the building. The analysis showed that fixed-wing aircraft experienced a substantial increase in angle of attack over a relatively short period of time (<1 s) as they fly through the shear layer at a representative forward velocity, which can be well above typical stall angles. Due to the slow flight speeds required for landing and take-off, significant control authority of rotor systems is required to ensure safe operation due to the high disturbance effects caused by localized gusts from buildings and protruding structures. Currently there appears to be negligible certification or regulation for AAM systems to ensure safe operations when traversing building flow fields under windy conditions and it is hoped that the insights provided in this paper will assist with future certification and regulation.

FFP: A Force Field Protocol for the tactical management of UAV conflicts

In recent years, we have seen a tremendous growth in the adoption of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Nowadays, UAVs are used in many different industries such as agriculture, inspection (bridges, pipelines, etc.), parcel delivery, etc. In the near future, this will lead to a substantial increase of aircraft in our airspace, especially in urban areas. Many existing collision avoidance approaches rely on heavy and/or expensive sensors, which limits its use for real UAVs due to increased costs, weight and complexity. Hence, to address this problem, in this paper we present a solution for the tactical management (i.e. in-flight) of UAV conflicts outdoors that introduces minimal requirements: a wireless interface and a GPS module. Specifically, we provide a collision avoidance algorithm based on artificial potential fields to provide flight safety. Our solution, called Force Field Protocol (FFP), allows the UAVs to autonomously detect each other using wireless communications, and to maintain a safe distance between them without the intervention of any central service. Experiments performed in our multi-UAV simulator ArduSim show that, with our approach, collisions between two UAVs are completely avoided in a wide set of scenarios, while introducing low disturbances to the original flight plans. Specifically, in the scenarios that we tested, the additional flight time introduced will be only 7 s longer in the worst case; in addition, it is able to improve upon previous approaches by reducing flight time by up to 54 s. We have shown experimentally that our approach can be scaled easily up to 100 UAVs, and that the probability of a collision is very low (< 0.06) despite flying in a small area (2.5 km × 2.5 km).

Sustainability of Parcel Stations - Opportunities for Climate Protection

Growing e-commerce leads to more traffic, congestion and emissions in cities due to the increasing parcel volumes. Parcel stations can represent a sustainable form of parcel delivery to private households. This paper addresses the research question under which conditions the use of parcel stations can make a relevant contribution to climate-friendly urban logistics. First, the sustainability of parcel stations is evaluated; then, the usage behavior and the acceptance of the recipients is analyzed in order to identify fields of action for increasing acceptance and the need for further research. The data source for this work is a systematic search of current literature and research projects.

NURO’s future challenge to delivering robots

Business analysis act as an important part of every company. NURO is a newly established business that found an electric-powered delivery vehicle that could drive by itself. The service is based on last-mile delivery of groceries, food, consumer products, and parcels. This article mainly focuses on the prospect development of artificial intelligence which may become a fashion trend in the future. This article uses NURO which is a new technology company, creating a delivery vehicle as an example and analysis it from the aspects of business, strategies, and finance by using the SWOT method. Moreover, there are several goals that we are trying to achieve. For instance, NURO's cars should become more sustainable and safer, making effective delivery happens. As a result, if NURO can reach this altitude, there is no competitor left to compete market with NURO. It would not be limited to delivering parcels like necessities or daily products mainly within the community.

Bilevel Memetic Search Approach to the Soft-Clustered Vehicle Routing Problem

This work addresses a soft-clustered vehicle routing problem that extends the classical capacitated vehicle routing problem with one additional constraint, that is, customers are partitioned into clusters and all customers of the same cluster must be served by the same vehicle. Its potential applications include parcel delivery in courier companies and freight transportation. Due to its NP-hard nature, solving it is computationally challenging. This paper presents an efficient bilevel memetic search method to do so, which explores search space at both cluster and customer levels. It integrates three distinct modules: a group matching-based crossover (to generate promising offspring solutions), a bilevel hybrid neighborhood search (to perform local optimization), and a tabu-driven population reconstruction strategy (to help the search escape from local optima). Extensive experiments on three sets of 390 widely used public benchmark instances are conducted. The results convincingly demonstrate that the proposed method achieves much better overall performance than state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of both solution quality and computation time. In particular, it is able to find 20 new upper bounds for large-scale instances while matching the best-known upper bounds for all but four of the remaining instances. Ablation studies on three key algorithm modules are also performed to demonstrate the novelty and effectiveness of the proposed ideas and strategies. Funding: This work was supported by the Macau Young Scholars Program [Grant AM2020011], Fundo para o Desenvolvimento das Cienciase da Tecnologia (FDCT) [Grant 0047/2021/A1], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 61903144, 71871142, and 71931007], and the Open Project of the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society [Grant AC01202005002]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2022.1186 .

Last-Mile Delivery Methods in E-Commerce: Does Perceived Sustainability Matter for Consumer Acceptance and Usage?

Sustainability has gained significant importance in e-commerce, as it impacts both consumer behavior and company success. This paper contributes to the literature on sustainability in e-commerce by studying the perceived sustainability of three common last-mile delivery methods (home delivery, parcel lockers, and click and collect) and other drivers of consumers’ acceptance of each delivery method (perceived costs, convenience). Based on a review of the relevant literature, a conceptual model integrating key determinants of consumers’ attitudes to delivery methods and their intention to use them is derived and tested using a sample of 536 German online buyers. The results demonstrate that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness increase the acceptance of the delivery methods, whereas perceived costs constrain it. The findings reveal significant influences of perceived sustainability on the acceptance of the delivery methods, which vary between its three components (environmental, economic, and social) and regarding the delivery method. Retailers and collaborating parcel delivery services are advised to continue making last-mile delivery methods more convenient. However, they are also advised to implement standards in terms of environmental and social sustainability and inform customers about their efforts regarding sustainable last-mile delivery to build a competitive advantage in omni-channel retailing.

The vehicle routing problem with drones and drone speed selection

Joint parcel delivery by trucks and drones has enjoyed significant attention for some time, as the advantages of one delivery method offset the disadvantages of the other. This paper focuses on the vehicle routing problem with drones and drone speed selection (VRPD-DSS), which considers speed-dependent energy consumption and drone-charging in detail. For this purpose, we formulate a comprehensive mixed-integer problem that aims to minimize the operational costs consisting of fuel consumption costs of the trucks, labor costs for the drivers, and energy costs of the drones. The speed at which a drone performs a flight must be selected from a discrete set. We introduce preprocessing steps to eliminate dominated speeds for a flight to reduce the problem size and use valid inequalities to accelerate the solution process. The consideration of speed-dependent energy consumption leads to the fact that it is advisable to perform different flights at different speeds and not to consistently operate a drone at maximum speed. Instead, drone speed should be selected to balance drone range and speed of delivery. Our extensive computational study of a rural real-world setting shows that, by modeling energy consumption realistically, the savings in operational costs compared to truck-only delivery are significant but smaller than those identified in previously published work. Our analysis further reveals that the greatest savings stem from the fact that overall delivery time decreases compared to truck-only delivery, allowing costly truck-driver time to be reduced. The additional energy costs of the drone, however, are largely negligible.

Branch‐price‐and‐cut for the truck–drone routing problem with time windows

AbstractConsidering the important realistic benefits of drones combined with trucks for last‐mile parcel deliveries, we define the truck–drone routing problem with time windows (TDRP‐TW). The TDRP‐TW has the characteristics of time windows, synchronization en route, direct delivery, multiple trucks, and multiple drones carried by each truck. Customers covered by truck routes can be used as drone launch/retrieval locations, which are called satellites in this study. The synchronization en route enables drones to launch from trucks to return to paired trucks at nodes other than departure sites if necessary. We present an effective branch‐price‐and‐cut algorithm, in which a concept named candidate forward‐satellite (CFS) is introduced to manage the labeling challenge caused by the synchronization en route. In addition, the branch‐price‐and‐cut algorithm is combined with an adaptive large neighborhood search to obtain approximation solutions for large‐scale instances. In the computational experiments, instances with up to 50 customers are solved to optimality, and approximation solutions of large‐scale instances with 100 customers are presented.

A drone hop from the local shop? Where could drone delivery as a service happen in Europe and the USA, and how many people could benefit from it?

The rapid technological and regulatory evolution in the field of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones) may soon open the way for their deployment in the last mile delivery of products.This has the potential to decrease delivery costs, reduce transport externalities caused by road traffic and reduce missed-deliveries. It could thus become a disruptor to the parcel delivery industry and for this reasonseveral transport and delivery companies are piloting experiments involving drones. Yet a detailed analysis of the market potential of this system is still only partly available in the literature.To bridge this gap, this paper tries to quantify the proportion of the population, both in Europe and the USA that could benefit from drone-delivery services.Results indicate that under the conditions considered drone delivery services could be financially viable in the Europe and in the USA, where they could serve between 16 and 43% and between 32 and 60% of the population respectively. These results indicate the viability of this industry in the near future, highlighting that the existing geographical distribution of populations has a significant influence and will likely drive the choice of the first deployments.

Collaborative Truck-Drone Routing for Contactless Parcel Delivery During the Epidemic

The COVID-19 pandemic calls for contactless deliveries. To prevent the further spread of the disease and ensure the timely delivery of supplies, this paper investigates a collaborative truck-drone routing problem for contactless parcel delivery (CRP-T&D), which allows multiple trucks and multiple drones to deliver parcels cooperatively in epidemic areas. We formulate a mixed-integer programming model that minimizes the delivery time, with the consideration of the energy consumption model of drones. To solve CRP-T&D, we develop an improved variable neighborhood descent (IVND) that combines the Metropolis acceptance criterion of Simulated Annealing (SA) and the tabu list of Tabu Search (TS). Meanwhile, the integration of K-means clustering and Nearest neighbor strategy is applied to generate the initial solution. To evaluate the performance of IVND, experiments are conducted by comparing IVND with VND, SA, TS, variants of VND, and large neighborhood search (LNS) on instances with different scales. Several critical factors are tested to verify the robustness of IVND. Moreover, the experimental results on a practical instance further demonstrate the superior performance of IVND.

물류유통정보 표준화를 위한 표준 택배송장 정보항목 연구

택배송장은 화물운송에 관한 제반 사항을 기록한 증서로서 택배화물의 다양한 고유정보를 증명하는 서류이자 물류정보시스템의 기반을 이루고 있다. 그러나 현재 택배송장은 사업자별로 업무방식이나 관리정보항목이 서로 상이한 비정형데이터의 성격을 갖고 있어 사업자 간 상호호환성 및 정보연계에서의 활용은 다소 어려움이 따른다. 최근 택배물류 서비스 환경이 단순한 송화인과 수화인 간 문전수송을 넘어 풀필먼트, 마켓플레이스, 공동운송, 국제운송 등 다양한 참여자가 개입하는 다양한 형태로 진화함에 따라 정보연계를 위한 표준화의 필요성이 급격히 높아지고 있다. 이에 따라 본 논문에서는 기존 택배송장 및 정보시스템의 공통 데이터필드를 종합하고, 다양한 서비스 시나리오 내에서 각 참여자의 역할을 분석함으로써 미래 택배물류환경에서 상호 정보연계를 위해 표준택배송장이 갖추어야 할 표준정보항목을 정의하고자 하였다. 기존의 표준연구결과와 비교하여 본 논문에서 도출된 표준 택배송장 표준정보항목(안)의 특징은 다음과 같다. 먼저 송수화인의 정보를 각각 의뢰 송수화인 · 실제 송수화인으로 구분하여 3PL(배송대행) 등의 서비스 유형에 적용 가능하도록 하였다. 또한 반품 또는 물류기업간 위탁운송발생 시 위탁운송정보를 관리할 수 있도록 관련 필드를 추가로 정의하였다. 마지막으로 국제택배서비스로의 확장을 고려하여 필요시 수출관세납부정보를 담을 수 있도록 관련 필드를 추가로 정의하였다. 이러한 연구 성과는 장래 표준 택배송장 관리시스템 개발과 정보연동 표준권고안 작성에 활용될 수 있다.

Robust traveling salesman problem with multiple drones: Parcel delivery under uncertain navigation environments

The improved unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) delivery systems allow an unattended truck to pair two or more drones to accelerate delivery. Although such systems have been addressed in the literature, the extent to which approach can design a robust truck-drone schedule under uncertainty is not yet understood. This paper introduces a robust traveling salesman problem with multiple drones (RTSP-mD), in which a truck coordinates with a heterogeneous fleet of drones to make deliveries under uncertain navigation environments. The RTSP-mD is first formulated as a second-order cone programming (SOCP) to minimize makespan and synchronization risk simultaneously. To solve this complex problem, a three-phased adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) algorithm is proposed. The experiment results show that nominal optimal solution generally has a lower expected makespan but rarely remains efficient or feasible under a small perturbation to schedules. About one-third of robust optimal solutions can be against a large reduction of synchronization risk at a negligible price in makespan. And we demonstrate that the drone number remains stable for robust (near-)optimal solutions rather than growing along with customer density increase.