Research on the Optimization of the Instant Delivery Problem within a City under the New Retail Environment

As consumers' requirements for delivery speed and service quality become higher and higher and demand for terminal delivery is increasingly diversified, urban instant delivery has become a development trend under the current new retail model. The instant delivery problem with commitment is studied. To improve the operability and usability, two algorithms strictly abiding by the time commitment to improve customer service satisfaction are proposed as follows. In the first algorithm, the center-of-gravity clustering method is used to select the distribution route for the customer, that is, the nearest distribution route is selected as the insertion route after calculating the distance from the new customer to the center of gravity of the existing distribution route. Then the nearest insertion algorithm is applied to insert the customer into the selected route without violating the time commitment to all customers. In the second algorithm, based on the principle of first-come-first-served, the first departure route is selected, and the customer is inserted after the last existing customer of the selected route. Finally, the effectiveness of the two algorithms are verified with the known benchmarks. It's found that the first algorithm performs better than the second one with a shorter total traveling distance and a lower error rate.