Method for Determining Loading Positions of Delivered Parcels by Genetic Algorithm with Three-Dimensional Modified BL Method with Multidirectional Reference Points

Abstract

In recent years, the number of delivered parcels has rapidly increased along with the growth of the Internet and courier services have been booming. In addition, many people refrained from going out due to the spread of the COVID-19, and also people who have never used e-commerce have started using e-commerce. Therefore, it has been become to require to deliver parcels more efficiently. One of the evaluation measures to realize an efficient delivery is minimizing the burden of loading/unloading parcels. To do so, loaded positions of parcels should be decided by considering the unloading sequence of the parcels so that a delivery person moves few parcels at the time of unloading them. Hence, some systematic method for deciding loaded positions of parcels would be required. However, at present, the delivery person determines the loading positions of them with not a systematic method but his experience or intuition method. In this research, we would try to optimize loading positions of parcels by using genetic algorithm. Our proposed method of determining the loading position would use genetic algorithm with three-dimensional modified bottom-left method with multidirectional reference points. In addition, we would make comparison between the method of loading from only one direction and the method of loading from multiple directions. The number of planned movement of parcels would be treated as an evaluation measure as well as previous researches. We would make comparison between the precedent and the proposed method, and consideration of the results. We could conclude that our proposed method has dramatically improved the precedent methods. The results by the multiple directions were about 20% better than the ones by one direction.