Design of sustainable urban electronic grocery distribution network

Abstract

To meet the expectation of multi-modal distributions from customers for last-mile delivery, a sustainable two-echelon E-Grocery delivery system is studied, which is motivated by the adaption of autonomous delivery robot (ADRs), parcel lockers in E-Grocery distribution industry. We formulate the multi-modal last mile system as a two-echelon location-routing problem with mixed vehicles and mixed satellites11 Intermediate depot. (2E-LRP-MVMS). A multi-objective optimization model is developed to capture the characteristics of cost components and environmental impact. The goal of the 2E-LRP-MVMS is to determine the location facilities, to optimize the number of parcels delivered to two echelons and routes at each level, also to reduce costs caused by carbon emissions. A hybrid immune algorithm is proposed, and two improved steps, vaccination and immunization are introduced in the algorithm. This research contributes to the last-mile delivery network design domain by modeling the environmental and economic cost of E-Grocery distribution adopting mixed fleets and mixed satellites.

Keywords

• E-grocery delivery network
• Autonomous delivery robot
• Two-echelon location-routing with the mixed fleet and mixed satellites
• Sustainable urban logistics
• Hybrid immune algorithm