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Distribution systems
Published in Thomas E. Johnsen, Mickey Howard, Joe Miemczyk, Purchasing and Supply Chain Management, 2018
Thomas E. Johnsen, Mickey Howard, Joe Miemczyk
Urban freight distribution strategies are difficult to implement as they typically involve higher costs and delays. There are three main urban distribution strategies. The first strategy is to rationalize deliveries so that fewer trucks enter the city centre to deliver to retailers, with the intention of minimizing congestion. What normally happens is that deliveries are restricted to certain times of the day, avoiding the daytime for example. Night-time deliveries are also an option or delivery times that avoid peak traffic periods. This means that deliveries are concentrated to certain times of the day which creates its own peaks in freight movements which in turn creates inconveniences and makes finding efficiencies more difficult. Added to this there are difficulties in matching deliveries and pick-up times so that return journeys are often empty. There has been a move to attempt to consolidate deliveries across multiple retailers in the same area but then finding common delivery windows is even more of a challenge. Also retailers may have widely different products, so the handling issues become significant, especially when synergies are sought between completely different sectors such as retail and waste collection.
Supporting the decision making process in the urban freight fleet composition problem
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2021
Roberto Pinto, Alexandra Lagorio
This paper addressed the fleet composition problem from the point of view of a logistics service provider or parcel delivery company with a focus on the context of urban freight distribution, where access limitations to the delivery areas may affect the possibility of using vehicles with specific characteristics. As in the general case, the urban freight fleet composition (UFFC) problem discussed must trade-off the cost of owning a large capacity in terms of delivery per day with the penalty costs (i.e. delay and outsource costs) connected to a smaller capacity. The problem has been addressed with a comprehensive approach, entailing the definition of a human-in-the-loop decision support system (HIL-DSS) architecture to allow including qualitative and unstructured data in the decision making process. Then, the quantitative component (i.e. the Decision model) of the HIL-DSS has been addressed, first with a deterministic approach, and subsequently with a stochastic reformulation.
Classification and benchmark of City Logistics measures: an empirical analysis
Published in International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 2018
Alberto De Marco, Giulio Mangano, Giovanni Zenezini
As a consequence, urban freight distribution systems are largely accountable for pollution, traffic congestion and other concerns in cities. For instance, a large French distributor estimates that their last-mile logistics activities in urban areas account for more than 60% of its CO2 emissions (Bohne and Ruesch 2013). Earlier surveys also report that the share of CO2 emissions from freight vehicles in relation to total urban traffic is about 20–30%, while, for Particulate Matter (PM), this figure reaches around 50% (Schoemaker et al. 2006).