A decision support system to investigate dynamic last-mile distribution facilitating cargo-bikes

ABSTRACT

This work presents a decision support system to facilitate efficient urban last-mile distribution. Orders are collected and delivered by a fleet of both conventional vehicles owned by a logistics provider and cargo-bikes operated by freelancers. Additionally, micro-hubs are operated to perform transshipments between multiple vehicles. To investigate the corresponding problem setting, an agent-based simulation is developed, which uses dynamic optimisation procedures to generate and select vehicle routes and transshipment points. Experiments motivated by dynamic real-world urban restaurant delivery services investigate the impact of cargo-bikes, urban consolidation and guaranteed delivery times. Potentials are discussed and implications for successful implementations are provided. Results highlight the importance of having a sufficient number of active cargo-bikes available and benefits of incorporating consolidation strategies to guarantee timely deliveries.

KEYWORDS:

• Dynamic routing
• simulation optimisation
• urban consolidation
• cargo-bikes
• decision support system
• food logistics

Acknowledgements

We thank our project partners, particularly the Institute for Transport Studies of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, for the support. The remarks of the anonymous reviewers are further acknowledged and appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Christian Fikar http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3885-9307

Patrick Hirsch http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2678-4299

Manfred Gronalt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0944-4911

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft) under [grant number 845 348] of the programme ‘Mobilität der Zukunft’.