Last-mile delivery concepts: a survey from an operational research perspective
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Last‑mile delivery concepts: a survey from an operational research perspective Nils Boysen1 · Stefan Fedtke1 · Stefan Schwerdfeger1,2 Received: 18 May 2020 / Accepted: 4 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In the wake of e-commerce and its successful diffusion in most commercial activities, last-mile distribution causes more and more trouble in urban areas all around the globe. Growing parcel volumes to be delivered toward customer homes increase the number of delivery vans entering the city centers and thus add to congestion, pollution, and negative health impact. Therefore, it is anything but surprising that in recent years many novel delivery concepts on the last mile have been innovated. Among the most prominent are unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and autonomous delivery robots taking over parcel delivery. This paper surveys established and novel last-mile concepts and puts special emphasis on the decision problems to be solved when setting up and operating each concept. To do so, we systematically record the alternative delivery concepts in a compact notation scheme, discuss the most important decision problems, and survey existing research on operations research methods solving these problems. Furthermore, we elaborate promising future research avenues. Keywords Transportation · City logistics · Last-mile delivery · Survey
* Nils Boysen nils.boysen@uni‑jena.de http://www.om.uni-jena.de Stefan Fedtke stefan.fedtke@uni‑jena.de http://www.om.uni-jena.de Stefan Schwerdfeger stefan.schwerdfeger@uni‑jena.de https://www.mansci.uni-jena.de 1
Lehrstuhl für Operations Management, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Carl‑Zeiß‑Straße 3, 07743 Jena, Germany
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Lehrstuhl für Management Science, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Carl‑Zeiß‑Straße 3, 07743 Jena, Germany
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1 Introduction Last-mile delivery, i.e., all logistics activities related to the delivery of shipments to private customer households in urban areas, is a hot topic in cities all over the globe. Its high relevance is mainly triggered by the following general developments and challenges: • Increasing volume Two global mega-trends, in particular, urbanization and
e-commerce, are strong drivers for an ever increasing demand for last-mile delivery services. Urbanization denotes the trend that more and more people move into urban areas in general and into “megacities,” with 10 million inhabitants and more, in particular. There are estimates that by 2050, 70% of the world’s population, approximately 6.3 billion people, will live in major cities (Bretzke 2013). Furthermore, e-commerce is in a steady increase and more and more commercial goods are ordered online. In 2018, e-commerce still showed a worldwide growth rate of 23.3% (Statista 2018). Thus, more geographic concentration and increasing online orders per person lead to a steady increase in parcel volumes to be handled. In Germany, for instance, it is forecasted that by 2023, 4.4 billion shipments will need to be handled per year compared to
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