We shop at malls, eat at hawker centres, and buy items online. Retail stores display new offerings, manufacturers assemble products, and restaurants serve meals to customers daily.
Enabling all this is an extensive, and often unnoticed, urban logistics system. Urban logistics keeps the city going by delivering goods to people and businesses, at the right place and right time.
Our expectations for greater choice and convenience, as reflected in trends such as increasing e-commerce, will drive up the volume of deliveries. However, using more resources such as vehicles, drives and roads to meet these needs is unsustainable.
Fortunately, businesses can now adopt new technologies and modes of collaboration to transform urban logistics in a sustainable manner. If the logistics system is efficient, less resources would be needed and less vehicles would be moving on roads, making the city more liveable and sustainable.
There are various innovations we can explore to move an increasing variety and volume of goods efficiently.
By consolidating deliveries and sharing resources such as trucks, manpower and infrastructure, we can achieve economies of scale. Through such collaborations, we can get better asset utilisation, lower operating costs and reduced truck traffic.
Having consolidation centres to sort and combine small delivery loads from different suppliers will reduce the number of trucks entering an area.
An illustration of traffic flows between suppliers to malls, without and with a consolidation centre.
A District Dispersion Point (DDP) allows several buildings within a district to receive deliveries at a shared dock. An appointed in-mall distribution operator then delivers the goods to each building, allowing building owners to share infrastructure and delivery companies to have faster turnaround.
An illustration of how a DDP consolidates deliveries in a district for subsequent distribution.
If too many deliveries coincide at the same time, peak periods will result, with roads and loading bays becoming congested. Scheduling coordinates the delivery of goods, spreads out the arrivals and reduces congestion. Technology enables scheduling to be done easily and efficiently. In fact, some companies also adopt night deliveries, when the emptier roads allow for quicker, smoother deliveries.
Gurusoft's Dock Scheduling & Queue Management system is currently implemented at Changi Airport Terminal 4, where delivery trucks arrive during pre-booked timeslots for more efficient deliveries.
Digitalisation connects physical assets like vehicles to digital systems and creates new ways to view, manage and optimise operations. This includes optimising delivery schedules and routes with the help of algorithms. Digitalisation also supports innovations like resource pooling and scheduling, and allows them to be implemented more efficiently.
Reliable Transport & Logistic Services adopted VersaFleet's transport management software in mid-2018, which has allowed them to save time on operational planning and improve truck utilisation.
The last-mile delivery to the consumer is often the most expensive and inefficient leg in a supply chain. Self-collection points help reduce last-mile delivery challenges by bringing goods to consumers more simply and efficiently.
Having residential homes as neighbourly collection points for parcels allows consumers to enjoy the convenience of having different collection options in their neighbourhoods.
Local start-up Park N Parcel allows consumers to collect their deliveries from neighbours' homes. (Photo: Park N Parcel)
A network of parcel lockers that different delivery companies can access and use will also multiply possible delivery destinations, benefitting consumers with more pick-up options.
New technologies and modes of collaboration are already driving transformation in retail logistics. Similar innovations can also be applied to improve logistics in other sectors such as construction and food. Looking into the future, emerging technologies may allow us to push the boundaries even further.
One way is to integrate innovations at a system-level for increasing efficiency, by using technology to coordinate operations across stakeholders. We can also explore alternative modes of delivery, such as aerial drones that will reduce reliance on roads and manpower needs.