Cross-Chain order fulfillment coordination for internet Sales

The internet has completely changed the ways in which people communicate. Gradually, the internet is now also getting a firm grip on the physical goods flows. More and more consumers are ordering products via the web instead of buying them in a retail store. From a logistics point of view, this sales channel switch has an enormous impact. Deliveries to traditional brick-and-mortar stores can be made in relatively large quantities at regular intervals. Consumers then buy the product in the store and provide an important logistics service: they transport their own products to their own homes for free. With the internet, products are ordered in small quantities by individual consumers and the web store has to arrange for transporting the products to the consumers' home address. It is almost needless to say that this significantly increases logistics efforts in the supply chain.

From the consumers' perspective, there seems to be a desire to increase online ordering, provided that some circumstances are improved. An important limiting factor for consumers is the delivery process. In many web stores, the consumer has no influence on the timing of delivery. As a result more than 30% of all orders cannot be delivered at the first delivery attempt. Besides planning, there is also the issue of speed. Information gathering and ordering is so fast on the web, that even a delivery time of 24 hours may feel like a lifetime.

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> project plan cross chain order fulfillment

Project manager: prof.dr. K.J. Roodbergen (email address k.j.roodbergen@rug.nl)