by Walther Ploos van Amstel
With e-commerce setting records during the 2020 holiday season and package deliveries forecast to grow by 80% over the next decade, a new study by the MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab reveals the tangible environmental benefits of online shopping versus bricks-and-mortar.
The global pandemic has forever altered the logistics real estate landscape: supply chain decisions have become more holistic, more data-driven, and more urgent than ever. Underlying this shift are the same forces (urbanization, digitalization, and demographics) that have changed the way we live, work, and shop.
As e-commerce volumes surge, contract-logistics companies face increasing complexity. How can they capture more value in a $ 600 billion opportunity? McKinsey looks at market opportunities. McKinsey projects that the total value of omnichannel distribution will continue to grow 7 percent every year, from $ 600 billion in 2019 to $ 840 billion by 2025.
B2C e-commerce is still one of the fastest-growing marketing channels yielding less bundled direct-to-consumer deliveries. Last-mile deliveries cause costs and emissions especially in urban areas with a high density of online customers. Therefore, stakeholders in the context of last-mile parcel deliveries are interested in implementing efficient, innovative, and ecological last-mile concepts.
Recently, 3D Printing (3DP) has started disrupting transportation worldwide by providing enormous simplifications to transportation requirements, especially in the context of city logistics. In the near future, the potential exists to replace multi-echelon transportation hubs with integrated city logistics and 3D printing manufacturing hubs.
During recent years, several companies have introduced small autonomous delivery robots and evidenced their technical applicability in field studies. However, a holistic planning framework for routing and utilizing these robots is still lacking. Current literature focuses mainly on the logistical performance of delivery using autonomous robots, ignoring real-world limitations, and does not assess the respective …
Last-mile logistics is both a source and cause of problems in urban areas, especially problems related to traffic congestion, unsustainable delivery modes and limited parking availability. In this context, multiple sustainable logistics solutions have been proposed. A paper by Rosenberg et. al. focusses on micro depots (MDs), which can function as a consolidation center and …
DHL Express presents the Chariot. This cargo bike has been developed by DHL together with Cargo Cycling and their own bike couriers. The latest cargo bike is the next big step towards emission-free delivery. DHL sees the bike as the new industry standard for delivering parcels by bike.
The resilience of the logistics chains is essential and has been increasingly put to test with the dawn of on-demand logistics, attempting to accommodate citizen’s expectations for fast delivery at low or even or zero cost. City logistics have long been an important element of sustainable urban mobility, with its importance being further reinforced with the …
It was a tough week for air quality folks. Suddenly, wood smoke is more important than traffic emissions. Even more harmful than smoking. Painful for policymakers. Until last year, home biomass burners were still getting subsidies for their poisonous smoke. We know better now. It is painful because those air quality people want us to …