Economic and Environmental Benefits of Rescheduling Freight Deliveries

The economic, environmental and social costs of road freight transport vary by time of day and day of the week. Sustainability could be enhanced if the planning of delivery operations took more account of the variability of external costs over daily, weekly and seasonal cycles. This work module examines the opportunities that companies actually have for modifying delivery schedules and the associated logistical cost trade-offs they have to make.

Opportunities for rescheduling deliveries are constrained by the need to synchronise transport with production and distribution operations, particularly in low-inventory supply chains. Little research has been undertaken to assess the degree of flexibility in these supply chains and the logistical cost trade-offs that companies would have to make in rescheduling deliveries, for instance to night-time. We examine the interaction between delivery scheduling and the scheduling of production, warehousing and retailing activities to assess the degree of operational flexibility and cost implications of retiming deliveries for different types of supply chain operations.

Main objective: finding the scope for modifying delivery schedules in practice.

Tasks:

Examine sample of companies from different industrial sectors and levels in the supply chain
Compile process maps for their core operations
Assess the consequences of varying delivery start and end times in economic and environmental terms

Figure. Research design

Initially, this project made use of opinions expressed in focus group discussions exploring the opportunities for modifying delivery schedules to take advantage of times when roads are less congested and travel times may be faster. T

Additionally, industrial partners will be recruited to take part in case studies aiming to examine the opportunities that companies actually have for modifying delivery schedules and the associated logistical cost trade-offs they have to make, particularly in low-inventory supply chains. Companies from different industrial sectors and different levels in the supply chain are invited to take part in this project. The sustainability benefits of such modifications, particularly in terms of CO₂ emission savings will also be assessed.

Dr Andrew Palmer constructed a model capable of estimating potential savings from a more balanced split of HGV movements between day and night. The savings can be expressed in terms of time, distance travelled, fuel consumed, CO₂ emissions or cost. This framework provides a national perspective on the research problem and gives an estimate of the magnitude of potential savings at a macro-level.