Simulation of Package Delivery Optimization using a Combination of Carriers and Drop-Ship

A variety of goods and services in the contemporary world requires evolutionary improvement of services e-commerce platform performance and optimization of costs. Contemporary society is deeply integrated with delivery services, purchasing of goods and services online, that makes competition between service and good providers a key selection factor for end-user.. As long as logistic, timely, and cost-effective delivery plays important part authors decided to analyse possible ways of improvements in the current field, especially for regions distantly located from popular distribution canters and drop-ship delivery networks. Considering both: fast and lazy delivery the factor of costs is playing an important role for each end-user. The work proposes a simulation that analyses the current cost of delivery for e-commerce orders in the context of delivery by the Supplier Fleet, World-Wide delivery service fleet, and possible vendor drop-ship and checks of the alternative ways can be used to minimize the costs. Special attention is given to Drop-Ship networks as the factor of possible costs decrease. The main object of investigation is focused around mid and small companies living far from big distribution canters, in the rural areas but actively using e-commerce solutions for their daily activities. The authors analysed and proposed a solution for the problem of cost optimization for packages delivery for long-distance deliveries using a combination of paths delivered by supplier fleets, worldwide, local carriers and drop-ship networks. Data models and Add-ons of contemporary Enterprise Resource Planning systems have been used, and additional development is proposed in the perspective of the flow selection change for combination of carriers. The experiment is based on data sources of the United States companies using a wide range of carriers for delivery services and uses the data sources of the real companies; however, it applies repetitive simulations to analyse variances in obtained solutions for different combinations of carriers.