Multi-Objective Optimization for Order Assignment in Food Delivery Industry with Human Factor Considerations

Zhilan Lou, Wanchen Jie and Shuzhu Zhang
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Zhilan Lou: School of Data Sciences, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, Hangzhou 310018, Zhejiang, China
Wanchen Jie: Department of Information Management and Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, Hangzhou 310018, Zhejiang, China
Shuzhu Zhang: Department of Information Management and Artificial Intelligence, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, Hangzhou 310018, Zhejiang, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 19, 1-17

Abstract: The order assignment in the food delivery industry is of high complexity due to the uneven distribution of order requirements and the large-scale optimization of workforce resources. The delivery performance of employees varies in different conditions, which further exacerbates the difficulty of order assignment optimization. In this research, a non-linear multi-objective optimization model is proposed with human factor considerations in terms of both deteriorating effect and learning effect, in order to acquire the optimal solutions in practice. The objectives comprised the minimization of the operational cost in multiple periods and the workload balancing among multiple employees. The proposed model is further transformed to a standardized mixed-integer linear model by the exploitation of linearization procedures and normalization operations. Numerical experiments show that the proposed model can be easily solved using commercial optimization softwares. The results indicate that the variance of employee performance can affect the entire delivery performance, and significant improvement of workload balancing can be achieved at the price of slight increase of the operational cost. The proposed model can facilitate the decision-making process of order assignment and workforce scheduling in the food delivery industry. Moreover, it can provide managerial insights for other labor-intensive service-oriented industries.

Keywords: order assignment; multi-objective optimization; deteriorating effect; learning effect (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 (1)

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