6: A New Interactive Approach on Route Planning with Tight Delivery Time Windows: A Comparison of the Obtained Planning Results to Other Approaches

Tight delivery time windows together with low margins for delivery services pose a challenge to logistics service providers. This topic is the key to success or failure, especially in the distribution of groceries (ordered on the Internet) to private households. Some business models in the branch assume that a significant number of customers will only order if they are informed during order placement precisely when the goods will be delivered. It is therefore crucial for a good long-term customer relationship that these delivery time windows are reliably kept to.

A new approach to match these needs was developed by Heid & Kunze. The results of this approach were put into operation in late 2001. This paper describes the new approach and compares the results with other approaches. The analysis provided in this paper also quantifies the increase in vehicle productivity with the slackening of time constraints