City logistics network design and optimization under the environment of electronic commerce

Abstract

With the increasing consumer demand of online shopping, the necessity and significance of research on city logistics network are implicated. In this study, a model is developed to describe urban distribution network problem and minimize the costs of network logistics construction. Based on the order needs and distribution service level people proposed, the urban distribution system model is built, with taking consideration of the order density and distribution station service radius. The principle of the genetic algorithm combined with taboo search algorithm is described and proposed to find the solution to the model. The results of calculation indicate that the distribution system developed in this study is more economical and effective than the original one, and the validity of the proposed methods is demonstrated. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.