Application of a green logistics strategy to fulfil online retailing: split-order consolidated delivery in large-scale online supermarkets

For the new online retailing system, large-scale online supermarkets, their tremendous number of daily orders and their high split order rates have led to serious pollution to the environment. Aiming to decrease the delivery times, this paper focuses on the split-order consolidated delivery in large-scale online supermarkets. First, three possible split-order fulfilment measures are illustrated. And considering the delivery deadline, the optimisation model of split-order consolidated delivery by the lateral transshipment strategy is established. Second, a genetic algorithm combined with the simulated annealing algorithm is developed to solve the model. Finally, the numerical experiments reveal that the strategy of consolidation delivery is better than the splitting fulfilment in some scenarios, especially in reducing the operational cost and delivery times. The research will be beneficial to alleviate the dilemma of split-order fulfilment that large-scale online supermarkets are encountering and further have important potential in improving the urban environment.