2019-04-30
On the Benefits of Flexible Customer-to-Depot Assignments in Attended Home Delivery
Publication
Publication
ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management
This paper investigates the value of flexibility in customer-to-depot assignments in last-mile distribution operations. In current practice, many companies use fixed delivery regions for their fulfillment warehouses. This allows a decomposition of delivery operations by ware- house, thereby simplifying the planning process. However, this approach foregoes some optimization potential, relative to a holistic planning of the delivery operations across the network. In this paper, we assess the value of this flexibility. We first identify and characterize two specific types of benefits, namely a routing benefit and a pooling benefit. We then proceed to quantify these benefits in an extensive numerical study. Our results disentangle how the benefits depend on key environmental parameters. They also show that a flexible customer-to-depot assignment can add significant value in various relevant conditions.
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| hdl.handle.net/1765/116065 | |
| ERIM Report Series Research in Management | |
| ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management | |
| Organisation | Erasmus Research Institute of Management |
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Seifried, K., Agatz, N., & Fleischmann, M. (2019). On the Benefits of Flexible Customer-to-Depot Assignments in Attended Home Delivery (No. ERS-2019-004-LIS). ERIM report series research in management Erasmus Research Institute of Management. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/116065 |
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