Multi-objective optimization for two-echelon joint delivery location routing problem considering carbon emission under online shopping

ABSTRACT

A sharp increasing number of online shopping parcels and scattered customers lead each express company to invest a lot logistics resources, but its utilization rate is low. Each express company faces the challenge of improving customer satisfaction and market competitiveness while ensuring the total costs are under control. This paper develops a novel joint delivery (JD) model to reduce operation costs and carbon emission via strengthening horizontal cooperation and resource sharing among express companies. Furthermore, it designs a multi-depot two-echelon joint delivery location routing problem (MD-2E-JDLRP) mathematic model for JD considering multi-objectives and proposes a hybrid heuristic algorithm to solve the MD-2E-JDLRP. The performance of this algorithm was tested by benchmarks and a case study. Finally, a case study is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the MD-2E-JDLRP model. The obtained results show the JD model can effectively reduce costs and carbon emissions while ensuring higher customer satisfaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban logistics
• joint delivery
• location routing problem
• carbon emission
• online shopping

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (Grant number: 2020YFB1712900), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 71801025), the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Planning Project of Chongqing Education Commission in 2022 (No.22SKGH433), Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Chongqing (cstc2020jcyj-bshX0048) and Key Technologies R&D Programme of Henan Province from Henan Science and Technology Department (222102210005). The authors also appreciate the editor and the anonymous referees for their manuscript processing and remarkable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71801025]; the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Planning Project of Chongqing Education Commission [22SKGH433]; Henan Key Laboratory of Non-ferrous Metal Materials Science and Processing Technology [222102210005]; Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Chongqing [cstc2020jcyj-bshX0048]; National Key Research and Development Program of China [2020YFB1712900].