In view of success stories of unicorn startups from the sharing and gig economy such as Airbnb, DiDi, or Uber, it is not surprising that postal service providers try to transfer the sharing idea toward their last-mile delivery services: owners of under-used assets (here private crowdshippers...

In recent years, more and more disasters occurred. Additionally, the amount of people affected by disasters increased. Because of this, it is of great importance to perform the relief operations efficiently in order to alleviate the suffering of the disaster victims. Immediately after the...

In the wake of e-commerce and its successful diffusion in most commercial activities, last-mile distribution causes more and more trouble in urban areas all around the globe. Growing parcel volumes to be delivered toward customer homes increase the number of delivery vans entering the city...

Spotters (also denoted as switchers) are specialized terminal tractors, which are dedicated to the rapid maneuvering of semitrailers between parking lot and dock doors in large trailer yards. This paper is dedicated to spotter scheduling, i.e., the assignment of predefined trailer movements to a...

An efficient part feeding is among the top challenges of many mass producers applying mixed-model assembly lines, for instance, in the automotive industry. This paper introduces a novel part feeding policy applied by a large German assembly plant for car engines: In-line kitting. Under this...

Abstract To optimize their order fulfillment processes, many e-commerce warehouses employ a storage assignment strategy known as scattered or mixed-shelves storage. Under this approach, unit loads of homogeneous products are divided, and individual pieces are stored in various shelves throughout...