Integrated Planning of Order Capture and Delivery for Attended Deliveries in Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

The ongoing boom in e-commerce increases the importance of profitableand customer-oriented delivery services. Particularly in metropolitan areas, the highpopulation density offers great potential for e-commerce, while uncertain demandand traffic conditions increase planning uncertainty. This contribution focuses one-commerce delivery fulfillment (e-fulfillment) for attended last-mile delivery ser-vices in metropolitan areas. As the customer needs to be present for deliveries ofgroceries, for example, a service time window has to be agreed upon already when acustomer’s order is accepted. We consider service time windows as a scarce resourceand as the critical interface between order capture and order delivery. To optimallyutilize this scarce resource, we propose combining concepts of revenue managementand vehicle routing to extend tactical and operational planning for e-fulfillment. Wedefine the research problem and provide a perspective on integrated planning forattended deliveries. Furthermore, we present the design of a virtual laboratory tosupport benchmarking in e-fulfillment research. To ensure realistic experimentalsettings, we plan to incorporate real-world data provided by a major e-grocery in Germany.