E-Grocery Challenges and a Solution Approach from Multi-objective Perspectives

Abstract

This paper studies micro-fulfilment centres (MFCs) as a response to rising e-grocery sales and customer expectations from decreased delivery time and cost requests. MFC is a business solution that allows orders to be picked and packed in a hyper local facility. The study aim is to provide an overview on this subject from two research questions: i) how MFCs affect the last-mile delivery challenges? and ii) what design decisions are critical in building MFCs? While we evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of centralised versus decentralised warehousing strategies in the first question, we discuss the critical decisions in designing MFCs in the second question. In that, we discuss location and technology selection decisions as well as other warehousing design criteria. Further, this study provides future research directions at the end of this study. Keywords e-commerce • micro-fulfilment centre • sustainability• last-mile delivery • urban distribution centre