Design And Analysis Of Order Consolidation Rules For Take Out Platform Under O2O Model

With the rapid development of information technology,the 020 model has gradually penetrated into all aspects of life,such as Catering&Delivering,New-Retailing,tourism,education,transportation and other aspects.As a key point to ensure the efficient operation of the 020 platform,the instant delivery service(IDS)is favored by enterprises and consumers for its convenience,high-speed and efficiency.Catering&Delivering is one of the most important areas of IDS market,and the users number and markets scale has grown rapidly.However,with the increasing demand for Catering&Delivering,too many orders have also brought severe challenges to the Catering&Delivering platform.The main problems existing at present are:(1)With the increasing of order amount,the Catering&Delivering platform bears more and more high distribution costs and is in a state of deficit for a long time;(2)The number of orders in the meal time increases sharply and merchants and users are very scattered.Unevenness leads to the phenomenon of accumulation of orders in the case of limited delivery resources,resulting in problems such as reduced user satisfaction.Therefore,it is very necessary to adopt a reasonable order consolidation strategy to improve distribution efficiency and reduce distribution costs.Order consolidation means that a number of orders that satisfy certain conditions are combined into one order and assigned to one distributor.Reasonable consolidation rules can effectively integrate demand,allocate delivery resources,balance peaks and valleys,thereby reducing delivery cost and improving delivery quality.Through field research,it is found that the main dispatch rule of the Catering&Delivering platform is to assign the order to the nearest distributor to the merchant's location.In the grab mode,the distributor's grab strategy is based on his own experience to choose on the way orders.No matter in which mode,we found that there is no scientific consolidation rules are adopted,which causes the distributor to deliver only one order at a time,and the efficiency is very low.But if multiple orders are delivered,these orders doesn't have similar characteristics with each others,resulting in delivery distance increased invalidity.How to design consolidation rule,so that the Catering&Delivering platform can reasonably consolidate orders which are arrived at the same period of time is the main problem solved in this paper.Based on the operation and management model of the Catering&Delivering industry,this paper summarizes the main factors that should be considered when combining orders through field research and literature reading analysis.Moreover,based on the grid mapping of city maps to construct the similarity measure between orders,we designed consolidate rules based on store location(CRBSL),customer location(CRBCL)and delivery route(CRBDR).In order to verify the validity of each rule,the Snake Path-finding Algorithm(GSPFA),the Algorithm Based on Greedy Strategy(ABGS)and the Tabu Search Algorithm(TS)are selected from a variety of path planning algorithms.The optimal algorithm of them is used to calculate the delivery distance when verifying the validity of consolidation rules.In the experiment,this paper created three examples,including random orders,orders with close stores,and orders with close customer positions.And the optimal grid size has tested with three examples.On this basis,the applicability and work efficiency of each rule in different scenarios are compared and analyzed.The experimental results show that the consolidation rules designed in this paper can greatly reduce the delivery distance.In addition,the applicability of each rule in different scenarios is different:in random scenes,the delivery route is optimal when adopting CRBDR;in the scenario where the order store position is close,the effect of CRBSL is optimal;in the scenario where the order customer position is close,the CRBCL is better than the other two consolidation rules.Through the research of this paper,reasonable and effective consolidation rules are designed,which can reduce the delivery cost for the Catering&Delivering platform,improve the distribution efficiency,optimize the operation management mechanism of the Catering&Delivering platform,improve the customer satisfaction,and guarantee the Catering&Delivering industry healthy growth.In addition,this paper created three types of examples based on the characteristics of different scene orders,respectively testing the advantages and disadvantages of each consolidation rule in different scenarios,and can provide management suggestions for decision makers in the Catering&Delivering service industry.