A web-based experimental optimiser for supermarket home deliveries to improve efficiency and sustainability in response to the substantial growth in demand as a result of COVID-19

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Current supermarket home delivery mechanisms typically offer users an inflexible set of slots (usually 2 hours for food) which fail to make maximum use of the customer's actual time at home and rule out delivery times for customers for whom the rigid slot boundaries do not align with out-of-home activities.The project will deliver and integrated slot booking and routing solution for Attended Home Delivery that will allow end-users to specify arbitrary delivery availability rather than rigid 1, 2 or 4 hour time slots. In doing so it will enable route planning to take advantage of the wider time windows available for delivery to home workers, the retired and others who are able to receive deliveries across more than the stand time slot.Wider time windows translate to more efficient route plans, saving fuel, driver's hours, CO2 emissions and traffic congestion.The efficiency savings could be used to benefit customers through lower delivery charges particularly rewarding those who can provide the widest availability.