Enabling Urban Logistics Services at La Poste through Multi-Echelon Location-Routing

Matthias Winkenbach (), Paul R. Kleindorfer and Stefan Spinler ()
Additional contact information
Matthias Winkenbach: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Paul R. Kleindorfer: INSEAD, 77305 Fontainebleau, France
Stefan Spinler: WHU — Otto Beisheim School of Management, 56179 Vallendar, Germany

Transportation Science, 2016, vol. 50, issue 2, 520-540

Abstract: We present a large-scale static and deterministic mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model solving a two-echelon capacitated location-routing problem (2E-CLRP) with modal choice in the context of urban logistics services (ULS). This model aims to support the development of profitable ULS by guiding the strategic decision making of postal operators as they design an optimal facility network and vehicle fleet for the centralized consolidation and transportation of inbound and outbound urban freight flows. After comprehensively analyzing operating data from La Poste , we identify the key determinants of an optimal infrastructure and fleet design for the centralized coordination and consolidation of urban freight flows under a global service time constraint. Further, we discuss the optimal design’s sensitivity to changes in the input data and parameters of the 2E-CLRP model. The main theoretical contributions of this work are an optimal routing cost estimation formula and an optimization heuristic. Together these allow us to solve the large-scale MILP problem presented here within a reasonable time and with little loss of precision.

Keywords: two-echelon location-routing; multi-tier distribution network design; computational optimization; integer programming; routing cost approximation; urban logistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2015.0624 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:50:y:2016:i:2:p:520-540

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Transportation Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().