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In an attempt to increase our understanding of the details involved in a last mile puzzle and better equip our product to support its planning, the IPE team for Last Mile Optimization has been working on the definition of detailed business process diagrams. This post describes the high level business process identified for the Last Mile delivery puzzle. Although the focus of the solution is on operational planning and optimization which entails the creation of efficient routes with a focus on reducing costs, the depot activities are a vital aspect of the supply chain and therefore the planning process. To better understand the high level scope of the Last Mile Optimization IPE please refer to this post.

The business processes displayed in the image represent a typical day in the life of a last mile planner at a depot. In essence two separate process flows take place during a planning day; 1) the physical events at the customer depot as depicted in green and 2) the planning related activities and decisions executed in the planning application depicted in blue. Both flows interact throughout the day.

1A. Trucks will transport the parcels from the hubs (i.e. sorting centers) to the depot, where arrival of the parcels mostly takes place in the (early) morning.

1B. The parcels at the depot are sorted according to the roundtrips created by the planning application. As a result of the sorting process, the parcels will be available for the drivers to allow them to start loading the delivery vehicles.

1C. When the driver is ready for it and the sorted parcels have been made available, loading of parcels into the delivery vehicle can start. Upon doing so the parcels can be scanned by the driver.

1D. Once ready, the drivers can start the execution of the roundtrips.

2A. Before any of the parcels arrive at the depot, digital order information is sent to the planning application. This will allow the application to determine roundtrips for the drivers. During the day the application might receive more orders which also need to be planned.

2B. Roundtrips are created for the orders and these are optimized for total costs while adhering to the business rules regarding e.g. driver breaks and the specific areas a driver is allowed to service. This information will be necessary input for the sorting process as this will determine which driver gets which parcels.

2C. When loading has finished, the scanning information from the driver might show a difference between the planned parcels on a roundtrip and the parcels loaded into the vehicle. The planning application can then adjust the planned roundtrips according to the loaded parcels by assigning/unassigning the relevant orders from the roundtrip and resequence if needed (due to additional/removed stops). Note that step 2c is optional.

Our Last Mile application will be updated this year to better support these business processes. The latest release (2021 Refresh1) supports the more important parts already. In the upcoming releases this year we expect to improve the fit to these business processes further, most notably introducing the ability to import actual data on which parcels a driver has loaded into the vehicle. This will ensure our products completely and adequately support the business processes at a last mile customer.