Flexible Assignment of Loading Bays for Efficient Vehicle Routing in Urban Last Mile Delivery

Tomislav Letnik, Matej Mencinger and Iztok Peruš
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Tomislav Letnik: Transportation Engineering and Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
Matej Mencinger: Transportation Engineering and Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
Iztok Peruš: Transportation Engineering and Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 18, 1-19

Abstract: Urban freight deliveries are often subject to many access restrictions which creates the need to establish a system of loading bays and to split the last mile delivery into driving and walking parts. A new model based on hard and soft clustering approach is developed to solve the loading bay assignment problem for efficient vehicle routing and walking in last mile delivery. The flexibility of the model is provided by the soft clustering approach based on different membership degrees of customers to loading bays. Especially for instances with large numbers of loading bays, soft clustering seems to give better results, it leads to higher flexibility of city logistics systems, minimal driving distances, and adequately short walking paths, which contribute to the goal of reaching sustainable urban freight deliveries.

Keywords: city logistics; last-mile delivery; loading bay; facility location; fuzzy clustering; two-echelon routing problem; location-routing problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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