Comparison of Efficient Planning and Optimization Methods of Last Mile Delivery Resources

Abstract

A review of recent Last Mile Delivery optimization proposals is presented. The proposals are classified according to the criteria of collaboration, ranging from optimization of a single route to the integration of multiple carriers. An alternative proposal is presented, based also on collaboration, but which does not involve either integration into a single organization or sharing of its resources. Each carrier is represented as a Virtual Organization of Agents (VO). A global optimizer, also a VO, oversees the search for deliveries that can be better delivered by another carrier and new routes are calculated based on a win-win approach. This approach has the advantages of being easily configurable by integrating or removing the VO of each carrier, highly distributable using a cloud infrastructure, easily scalable both for physical areas and computational resources using the cloud infrastructure in case more computational power is needed. It also allows the sharing of the least amount of information possible among carriers, so that they only know about the deliveries that they are losing or gaining.