Community logistics: a dynamic strategy for facilitating immediate parcel delivery to smart lockers

Eric K.H. Leung, Zhiyuan Ouyang, George Q. Huang

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The COVID Pandemic since early 2019 has imposed significant effects on our life. In the retail and logistics sector, the large-scale national lockdown has drastically driven e-commerce sales because the e-marketplace has become the only sales channel. Whilst the pandemic has accelerated the shift towards a more digital world and led to an irreversible dependence on e-commerce retailing, the pressure is on retailers and logistics service providers to respond to the growing demand for immediate delivery in the e-commerce era. Given the integration of smart lockers into developing a more favourable environment which potentially makes immediate delivery more feasible, this paper introduces a novel, dynamic delivery strategy, namely Community Logistics Strategy (CLS), for formulating and updating the new delivery plan in real time as new delivery requests to smart lockers arrive. To shed light on the effect of dynamic order arrival towards delivery planning, the CLS attempts to update the delivery plan by taking new requests into account in real time. Simulation results reveal the superiority of the proposed strategy in managing e-commerce delivery requests, especially within megacities where consumers are highly dense in a compact geographical area.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2937-2962
Number of pages26
JournalInternational Journal of Production Research
Volume61
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 May 2023
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Community Logistics Strategy
  • dynamic vehicle dispatching
  • e-commerce last-mile delivery
  • instant delivery problems
  • real-time scheduling
  • spatial and temporal postponement

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Strategy and Management
  • Management Science and Operations Research
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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