Asset-less city logistics

Abstract

Problem Statement: To scale up the capacity at last-mile point without additional investment. To get ready for peak load at shortest possible lead time. During peak time the delivery requirement can go upto 5X-10X of the normal requirement. Introduction: E-commerce as a business has flourished all over the world in the past decade. It has become a means to access a wide variety of selection of goods. It has provided convenience of getting goods from a very wide seller base at competitive price. Speed of delivery and customer experience has come up as a differentiating factor for the companies working in this sector. E-commerce companies all over the world are making effort to offer services like same day delivery and next day delivery. In India, cashon-delivery is a unique feature that is being offered. All these factors increase complexity of the delivery process. To improve operational performance, technology is being used in a big way to handle this complexity. A typical E-commerce supply chain consists of interconnections between seller and customer. Supplies are secured from the sellers’ end and put in big warehouses called fulfilment centres. The inventory available at the fulfilment centre is updated on the portal of the e-commerce company. Once a customer places orders, a computer algorithm selects the nearest fulfilment centre for supplies. There are a number of other different models prevalent in e-commerce like in one of the delivery modes the seller directly supplies to the customer and in another goods are not routed through the fulfilment centre. At the fulfilment centre, the item is picked from the shelf and packed for supply to customer. In between the connection of seller with fulfilment centre, there may be a need for consolidating the supplies to create a full truck load. The process of collecting supplies from a seller or fulfilment centre and sending them to logistics hub is called first mile logistics. Once the supplies reach the logistics hub, they need to be delivered to logistics hub nearest to the customer. This process of sending goods from one logistics hub to another is called line haul. The process of making delivery from this logistics hub to the customer is called the last mile delivery.