E-Commerce Logistics: Two Exemplary Planning Problems in Modern E-Commerce Supply Chains

Having efficient logistic processes is an important factor for today's e-commerce retailers to survive in a competitive market. But not only company-intern logistic processes have to develop, but changes in customers' behavior also force third-party logistics providers and the public sector to rethink how goods should be supplied in a modern society. During my talk, I present two research papers of mine, which are representative for my general research topic.

First, I present research on the scattered storage assignment problem. Scattered storage is a storage assignment strategy where single items are isolated and distributed all around the shelves of a warehouse. This way, the probability of always having some items per stock-keeping units close-by is increased, which is intended to reduce the unproductive walking time during order picking. Scattered storage is especially suited if each order line demands just a few items, so that it is mainly applied by business-to-consumer online retailers. I present a storage assignment problem supporting the scattered storage strategy as well as results on important managerial questions.

In the second part of the talk, I present research on last mile deliveries with truck-based autonomous robots. The concept relies on autonomous delivery robots launched from trucks. A truck loads the freight dedicated to a set of customers in a central depot and moves into the city center. Also on board are small autonomous robots which each can be loaded with the freight dedicated to a single customer and launched from the truck. Then, the autonomous robots move to their dedicated customers and, after delivery, autonomously return to some robot depot in the city center. The truck can replenish robots at these decentralized depots to launch further of them until all its customers are supplied. I present the resulting scheduling problem and suited solution methods, minimizing the number of late deliveries. Furthermore, the truck-based robot delivery concept is benchmarked with conventional attended home delivery by truck to assess the potential of this novel last-mile concept.

Both projects show that intelligent optimization can considerably contribute to a successful diffusion of novel logistics concepts both in warehousing and transport logistics.