Consolidation centers in city logistics: A cooperative approach based on the location routing problem

Abstract

In the context of city logistics, freight transportation is one of the prominent causes of traffic congestion, high levels of pollution, and safety concerns. To decrease the negative impact of these issues, different methods have been traditionally implemented. On the one hand, the location of urban consolidation Centers (UCCs) near a city can be used to consolidate freight delivery services. Therefore, the number of trucks moving in urban areas can be reduced. On the other hand, Horizontal Cooperation can also help to reduce environmental impact while increasing service level. This paper combines both strategies, that is, we deal with the location of UCCs and, simultaneously, we analyze different scenarios where the players of different supply chain processes exhibit various levels of cooperation. Thus, different levels of cooperations regarding routing and UCCs-location decisions are considered in the following scenarios: (a) non-cooperative case, in which all decisions are decentralized (i.e., each enterprise solves its own vehicle routing problem); (b) low-cooperative case, where depot capacities are shared but the customers are still being served by each company's fleet of vehicles; (c) semicooperative case, based on centralized route planning decisions (i.e. facilities and fleets are shared among participating enterprises); and (d) fully cooperative scenario, where the routing plans and facility-location decisions are taken by consensus amongst all the participants. In order to estimate the benefits of both strategies, we propose a flexible metaheuristic algorithm to deal with the combined location and routing problem under the different cooperative scenarios. Our results show impressive benefits of the proposed approach.

Combining Heuristics with Simulation and Fuzzy Logic to Solve a Flexible-Size Location Routing Problem under Uncertainty

“…Ferdi and Layeb [29] propose a GRASP with a novel technique used to create clusters around the open depots. Traditional applications of the LRP include horizontal cooperation [30], electric vehicle routing problems [31][32][33], city logistics [34], humanitarian logistics [35] or supply chain network design [36]. Moreover, most recent applications are related to environmental issues [37], cold supply chains [38] or waste management [39].…”

An Advanced LSTM Model for Optimal Scheduling in Smart Logistic Environment: E-Commerce Case

“…These works have been involved at varying levels of logistics task planning or scheduling. The use of AI solutions allowed designing smart logistics networks to consolidate traditional flows and reach higher economies scales [10]- [13]. In the literature, various decent approaches issues were widely proposed to smooth workflow in logistics contexts, such as route optimization [14], [15], warehouse and inventory management [16], traffic management [17], [18], packaging [19], and order tracking [7], [20].…”

Smart city concept in the light of the literature review

“…• environmental pollution (Caparros-Midwood et al, 2019;Alam et al, 2019;Munoz-Pandiella et al, 2018;Kosheleva et al, 2018); • urban logistics (Nataraj et al, 2019;Firdausiyah et al, 2019;Bjørgen et al, 2019;Cleophas et al, 2019;Faramehr et al, 2019;Mesjasz-Lech, 2014;Tomaszewska & Florea, 2018); • technical infrastructure (Petrova & Prodromidou, 2019;Faramehr et al, 2019;Pham & Phan, 2018;Juget & Ryckewaert, 2018); • waste management (Bugge et al, 2019;Amritha & Kumar, 2019;Dlamini et al, 2019;Scorţar et al, 2010); • aging population (Jayantha et al, 2018;Fang & Lai, 2018;Onoda, 2018;Greenfield, 2018;Jarocka & Wang, 2018); • stratification of wealth levels, areas of poverty (Muktiali, 2018;Lanjouw & Marra, 2018;Ma et al, 2018;Aguilar & López, 2016); • low level of citizen participation in the management of public affairs (Mavrodieva et al, 2019;Sou, 2019;van Holm, 2019;de Castro Pena et al, 2017). Knowing the identified challenges and the expected increase in the number of urban residents around the world, there is an increasing need for new and innovative ways to manage the complexity of urban life.…”