This paper presents an empirical study focused on the use of TooGoodToGo smartphone applications by urban food retailers and HoReCa sector owners, evaluating their satisfaction levels with using this ...app and identifying the most relevant business levers that might convince other operators to adopt anti-waste programs and more sustainable behaviors. To this end, a survey questionnaire is administered to a sample of respondents. Data are statistically analyzed using the Kruskal–Wallis test to consider the different perspectives of the identified subsamples. The results reveal that business operators claim to have a high level of satisfaction with exploiting the service provided by the app and that it is a lever for increasing the number of customers served, even if there is not a high positive effect on revenue. However, retailers with more years of operations, who can be considered more experienced, can better exploit the opportunities of the TGTG business. This study contributes to a better understanding of the benefits of using web application services to decrease waste from urban food retailers. Consequently, levers for convincing new operators to adopt the service and their role in increasing customer awareness are identified and discussed.
Following the spread of the Industry 4.0 paradigm, the role of digital technologies in manufacturing, especially in production and industrial logistics processes, has become increasingly pivotal. ...Although the push towards digitalization and processes interconnection can bring substantial benefits, it may also increase the complexity of processes in terms of integration and management. To fully exploit the potential of technology, companies are required to develop an in-depth knowledge of each operational activity and related human aspects in the contexts where technology solutions can be implemented. Indeed, analyzing the impacts of technology on human work is key to promoting human-centred smart manufacturing and logistics processes. Therefore, this paper aims at increasing and systematizing knowledge about technologies supporting internal logistics working activities The main contribution of this paper is a taxonomy of the technologies that may be implemented in the different internal logistics areas to support a Logistics 4.0 model. Such a contribution is elaborated in accordance with a deductive approach (i.e., reasoning from the particular to the general), and backed up by an analysis of the literature. The taxonomy represents a useful framework to understand the current and possible technological implementations to drive logistics processes towards Logistics 4.0, with specific attention to the relation between human operators and technologies.
•Drones are a developing technology for last-mile delivery with benefits on efficiency, traffic congestion, and pollution.•However, some contraints must be addressed to overcome the operating range ...limitations of currently available technology.•We address the problem of extending the drones operating range from a network design perspective•We propose and compare a bi-objective MIP formulation and a heuristic method based on the computation of m-shortest paths.•The models presented can open new perspectives in last mile delivery network design.
Drone-based delivery represents a possible way of performing last-mile logistics activities with potential benefits on process efficiency, traffic congestion, and pollution emissions. However, many technological and legislative challenges still have to be overcome. From the technology perspective, the operating range of drones represents a critical aspect. This paper addresses the problem of extending the drones operating range from a network design perspective, in which there is the possibility (already technically feasible) to recharge drones on their journey to their final destinations using suitably located charging stations. This paper proposes a mathematical model and a heuristic method for a network design problem that combines two objectives regarding infrastructural investments (i.e., the number of charging stations to be deployed) and service aspects (i.e., minimizing the travelled distances). The proposed model and the developed heuristic delineate a strategic-level approach to the delivery process using drones.
Simulation models have always been an aid in epidemiology for understanding the spread of epidemics and evaluating their containment policies. This paper illustrates how hybrid simulation can support ...companies in assessing COVID-19 containment measures in indoor environments. In particular, a Hybrid Simulation (HS) is presented. The HS model consists of an Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) to simulate the virus contagion model and a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model to simulate the interactions between flows of people in an indoor environment. Compared with previous works in the field of simulation and COVID-19, this study provides the possibility to model the specific behaviors of individuals moving in time and space and the proposed HS model could be adapted to several epidemiological conditions (just setting different parameters in the agent-based model) and different kinds of facilities. The HS approach has been developed and then successfully tested with a real case study related to a university campus in northern Italy. The case study highlights the potentials of hybrid simulation in assessing the effectiveness of the containment measures adopted during the period under examination in the pandemic context. From a managerial perspective, this study, exploiting the complementarity of the ABM and DES approaches in a HS model, provides a complete and usable tool to support decision-makers in evaluating different contagion containment measures.
Abstract
Digital servitization is a business model transformation process enabled by the use of digital technologies to create or improve industrial services and product‐service offerings by creating ...value and competitive advantage increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as company revenue streams. 5G networks can enable digital servitization of manufacturing by providing faster, more secure, and more reliable communications between machines, devices, and humans. This paper explores the impact of adopting 5G technologies on servitization and identifies the services that can benefit most from 5G networks. The research consists of two parts: a literature review of the technologies currently used in the design and provision of industrial services that could benefit from 5G networks and an exploratory survey involving manufacturing companies that have started the digital servitization journey. The main results emerging from the research suggest that 5G can profoundly impact services supported by Augmented Reality, Cloud computing, and Cyber‐physical systems, mainly concerning maintenance, workforce training, machine diagnosis and monitoring.
The Urban Freight Fleet Composition (UFFC) problem addresses the need of a logistics service provider to define the optimal fleet mix in terms of types and number of vehicles to serve the demand for ...goods delivery in an urban area. Urban areas can be subject to access restrictions (e.g. based upon the time of the day or vehicles' characteristics) that could affect the performance of transport assets. In this paper, we consider time-window access restrictions based upon the characteristics of the vehicles, and we propose a human-in-the-loop decision support system (HIL-DSS) architecture using optimisation and simulation models to address the trade-off between vehicles characteristics, revenues, costs, and performance. We formulate both a deterministic and a stochastic optimisation decision model addressing the problem in the context of the HIL-DSS. In doing this, we emphasise the role of the human decision maker in tackling a complex problem affected by variability and uncertainty, and to overcome the rigidity of optimisation models thanks to the possibility to include qualitative information into the process.
Purpose
The last decades have witnessed an increased interest in urban logistics originating from both the research and the practitioners’ communities. Sustainable freight transports today are on the ...political, social and technological agenda of many actors operating in urban contexts. Due to the extent of the covered areas and the continuous progress in many fields, the resulting body of research on urban logistics appears quite fragmented. From an engineering management perspective, the purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review (SLR) that aims to consolidate the knowledge on urban logistics, analyse the development of the discipline, and provide future research directions.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses the main evidence emerging from a SLR on urban logistics. The corpus resulting from the SLR has been used to perform a citation network analysis and a main path analysis that together underpin the identification of the most investigated topics and methodologies in the field.
Findings
Through the analysis of a corpus of 104 articles, the most important research contributions on urban logistics that represent the structural backbone in the development of the research over time in the field are detected. Based on these findings, this work identifies and discusses three areas of potential interest for future research.
Originality/value
This paper presents an SLR related to a research area in which the literature is extremely fragmented. The results provide insights about the research path, current trends and future research directions in the field of urban logistics.
The food and grocery retail sector is undergoing a deep transformation fuelled by customers’ changing habits and new digital technologies. The logistics in this area is often challenging, especially ...considering the food characteristics and regulations. However, despite the relevance of the topic, the extant body of the scientific literature regarding the role of logistics in the food and grocery sector appears quite fragmented. This paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) aiming at consolidating the knowledge, analyse the development, clarify the trends and main topics, and highlight the gaps in the scientific literature concerning the role of supply chain and logistics in the food and grocery retail sector. Through the analysis of a corpus of 56 articles, the most critical research contributions on food and grocery retail logistics are discussed, highlighting the main trends over the years, as well as the applied research methods. Finally, starting from literature gaps, future research directions are identified.
PurposeThis article aims to investigate the organisational implications of adopting Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, giving specific attention to operations. The paper addresses these implications ...in two directions: organisational prerequisites for, and consequences of, I4.0 technologies.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on a multiple case study of Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing. Ten case studies have been developed through interviews, company visits and secondary data collection.FindingsThe multiple case study results show that: (1) a lean organisational structure supports effective adoption of I4.0 technologies; (2) introducing such technologies is linked to developing a new kind of job profile (i.e. the “Autonomous Operative Job Profile”); and (3) higher levels of technology adoption create a higher need for non-technical competences.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation of this research relates to the highly heterogeneous maturity levels of the sampled companies, due to the relative newness of the I4.0 paradigm. Future research could, therefore, longitudinally analyse the technology integration process within organisations.Practical implicationsThis research provides preliminary evidence about how organisations and technologies co-evolve, thus suggesting that managers should co-design these areas. It also demonstrates the extreme importance of designing a structured process and a clear set of human resource management tools to favour SME organisational development.Originality/valueThe study is built upon a conceptual framework derived from the sociotechnical perspective that analyses the interconnections between technology implementation and organisational change. From the results, three research propositions are derived to be tested on a larger scale.
In recent years, there has been an increasing transition towards the Industry 5.0 paradigm, which focuses on technology and sustainability but also on the resilience and human-centricity of the ...production and logistics processes. These changes require investment in equipment, process change, and new skills. To avoid the mismatch between the skills required by industry and the skills offered by university courses, recently, learning factories (LFs) have been spread worldwide, aiming at promoting hand-on learning approaches to manufacturing, logistics and technological processes. This paper illustrates how LFs can support the development of contents and competencies useful in the transition to Industry 5.0 in the industrial engineering courses. Starting from the description of a LF installed in Italy, this study presents a systematisation of the contents that can be addressed by adopting LF in the design of learning modules specifically facing the requirements and skills of the different Industry 5.0 areas.
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