Fleet Optimisation Exercise for European City Logistics
Project Background
The goal of this project is to determine the most optimal mixed fleet setup which can deliver and pick-up packages in a given city at the lowest possible cost. The interventions proposed from this study aim at minimising the operational cost as well as the environmental impacts of the operations.
Research Questions
- Determine the cost and efficiency impact of incorporating multiple delivery modes like bikes and walkers in inner city delivery operations.
- Identify the ideal combination of manual bikes, e-bikes, EVs and walkers which has the minimum operating cost per package and stop without negatively impacting efficiency
- Determine the reduction in emission and congestions by switching to EVs, bikes and walkers from the current fleet
Methods
- The project started by analysing the parcel delivery data in Munich and London
- Using centre gravity approach, optimal location to place consolidation hubs in the city of London was determined
- A decision rule to select whether to use package cars or bikes when delivering a parcel was developed using economic modelling approach
- This decision rule was then used to develop an agent-based model, describing one-month operations
- Experimentation was done to identify option that might minimise operational cost and environmental impacts