Decision Support for Consumer Direct Grocery Initiatives

Business-to-consumer e-commerce has not only increased the demand for package delivery services, such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service, but has also led to the development of new consumer direct (CD) service models and activities such as grocery delivery services. This paper proposes and analyzes various routing and scheduling problems and algorithms that will lead to more effective decision technology to support home delivery services (HDS), especially for CD full-line grocery services. The paper's goal is to introduce the home delivery problem, a new problem that captures many of the core features of HDS and allows the research community to focus on a common problem. In this problem, the vendor decides which deliveries to accept or reject and the time slot for the delivery, if it is accepted, to maximize expected profits. An algorithm is proposed, based on insertion techniques to help make these decisions. The paper also provides a demonstration of the importance of considering opportunity costs associated with accepting delivery request in a certain time slot. Finally, the paper sets the stage for the integration of profit optimization into the developed mode ls and techniques by defining the home delivery problem with incentives.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/1767714
• Authors:
  • Campbell, Ann Melissa
  • Savelsbergh, Martin W P
• Publication Date: 2005-8

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 313-327
• Serial:
  • Transportation Science
  • Volume: 39
  • Issue Number: 3
  • Publisher: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
  • ISSN: 0041-1655
  • Serial URL: http://transci.journal.informs.org/

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Decision making; Decision support systems; Delivery service; Door to door service; Heuristic methods; Real time information; Routing; Schedules and scheduling
• Uncontrolled Terms: E-business; Grocery delivery service
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01004193
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS, ATRI
• Created Date: Sep 28 2005 10:15AM