Optimizing last-mile logistics for end customers and societal satisfaction

Increasingly distribution is moving towards optimal delivery at the front door. A crucial question is how to organise the last mile logistics to ensure that optimal end-customer service delivery and satisfaction is ensured, without incurring unnecessary complexity and costs in the logistical system and at minimum environment impact. How much “leverage” is there in terms of customer service satisfaction and how can it be best operationalised / implemented?

This holds both online (optimal routing and planning) and offline (optimal stocking in store). Essentially this is an optimal inventory and storage problem, which finds it basis in pattern understanding (which products are where?) and pattern optimisation (which products should be sourced from where?), where the worlds of logistics, customer satisfaction, and sustainability meet each other. An important feedback is the end-customer satisfaction rating about logistics performance.

Studies show that for many products consumers are sensitive to delivery fees, yet customer satisfaction and urgency will also affect consumer decisions leading to the need to offer a varied (and thus costly) set of delivery options. Understanding of concepts and methodologies of how such patterns may evolve, unfold, and can be modelled using transaction data hold much broader relevance, but will initially be developed in the context of last mile logistics in relation to consumer satisfaction and consumer preferences.