Empowering local trade through digital support for online ordering and delivery service logistics
This research project is called SMART LOGISTICS for LOCALS (SLL). It involves a virtual marketplace where local merchants and service providers can offer their products, food and services to local customers on a completely digital platform – customers can then get these products and services delivered right to their door. Those who live locally can thus directly support the survival and development of the variety of options in their city through their purchasing choices. For locally based logisitics service providers who deliver the ordered goods, their delivery process can be made more sustainable through more efficient route planning. Central to SLL is the digital support of the entire value chain, from ordering to delivery to the doorstep. The project will run from August 2021 until July 2023 and has been funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Free State of Thuringia.
Research content and practice
Small retailers and service providers in particular often do not have the resources necessary to build an independent business. Due to pressures from the competitive nature of E-commerce, they also may not achieve the turnover needed to cover the costs of their online business.
SLL wants to make it easier for local traders, service providers and restaurateurs to enter the online business world by creating a digital marketplace including a digital storefront, as well as providing a digitalisation kit. New digital distribution channels as well as access to logistical structures should empower local suppliers and open up more development opportunities.
On the marketplace, which virtually reproduces the local trade structure, suppliers can present their product range and stay in direct contact with their clientele via communication tools. After end-customers have ordered the products on offer, they are sorted, prepared and finally delivered collectively the next day. A weekly grocery shop order can then be combined with regional delicacies or a fresh dish from a restaurant, for example.
The mobile backbone of the project is provided by a local logistics service provider. Through empirical analysis of the integration capacity of transport from a practical, economic and legal point of view, pick-up and delivery routes of shop orders can be efficiently dovetailed with the core logistics business.
Necessary hygiene standards or special requests (e.g. for the temperature of the goods) are included in the digital route planning. Digital solutions are being developed for the consolidation and sorting process, to then be integrated into a multi-use depot concept. Furthermore, additional services (night-time delivery, defined time-frames) are to be explored with a focus on inventory routes and depot structure. All new developments are tested and aggregated on both the system and user sides before a marketing strategy is finally drawn up.
Project partners
In additional to software manufacturer DAKO GmbH, publishing logistics company FUNKE Logistik GmbH and local retailers and restauranteurs from Jena and Erfurt are involved in the project.