Flexible vehicle scheduling for Urban Last Mile Logistics: The emerging technology of Shared Reception Box

Urban Last Mile Logistics (ULML) has been taking an increasingly important role alongside the development of e-commerce. The common delivery mode in the ULML is the Attended Home Delivery (AHD). However, such a delivery mode lacks flexibility, which means customers have to be waiting at home during certain time periods. Apart from AHD, another promising delivery mode is becoming available, which is the Shared Reception Box (SRB). SRB can release customers from time constraints and compensate the inflexibility of AHD so as to provide a satisfactory delivery. The theoretical research about the application of SRB is still rare, not to mention the integration of AHD and SRB. With this consideration, this paper aims to investigate this emerging technology and propose a mathematical model analyzing the integration effect of AHD and SRB in order to improve the overall efficiency of ULML.