OTROS PROCESOS DE SOLDADURAS CON ARCO ELÉCTRICO Y RELACIONADOS

Home delivery, on the so-called ‘last mile’, encompasses the activities that physically move the product to the consumer (Agatz et al., 2008b). It is argued that grocery home delivery services can be cheaper than conventional shopping where consumers go to the supermarket (Punakivi and Saranen, 2001). This calculation is based on an assumed economic value of €3.36 per hour that consumers put on their free time (Punakivi, 2003). By internalising the order picking function that consumers have been performing themselves, retailers are incurring additional costs which must be passed on the customer (Delaney-Klinger et al., 2003). In the case of Webvan, the US grocer with 30 minute time windows and a centralised automated warehouse, the cost of home delivery was estimated at $10 to $20 per order (Delaney-Klinger et al., 2003). In the UK the cost of order processing, picking and delivery was estimated between £8 and £20 per order depending on the picking location and the utilisation of the van (Retail Logistics Task Force, 2001). These costs are determined in the early 2000s and are most likely even higher today. In most cases today the delivery costs paid by the consumer are not more than £5 per delivery, meaning that most online retailers do not charge their customers the full costs of home delivery (Nicholls and Watson, 2005; Retail Logistics Task Force, 2001) and must subsidise the operation out of the profit on the product sales.

One way to improve the profitability of home delivery is to incorporate incentive schemes (Campbell and Savelsbergh, 2006). These can be quite sophisticated incentive schemes, for example, providing time slots with incentives depending on whether the delivery van is in the neighbourhood, or by developing an easier scheme which encourages customers to accept wider delivery windows. In that way the demand can be spread more evenly over the different time slots (Campbell and Savelsbergh, 2006).

Agatz (2009) showed that up to 10% can be saved if only certain time windows are offered in a particular neighbourhood. Deliveries in the same neighbourhood can then be combined in one (or just a few) delivery rounds instead of driving back and forth between different neighbourhoods.

Furthermore, short lead times between order and delivery increases the home delivery cost (Grando and Gosso, 2005). Same day deliveries are based on a dedicated courier

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trip which often returns empty to be able to meet the deadline, increasing the last mile costs substantially. The consolidation possibilities that arise in next-day delivery can reduce the costs significantly. For example a parcel delivery from London to Birmingham can cost £19.90 for next-day delivery versus £272 for same day delivery.

The same day delivery price is based on a dedicated vehicle and the distance, and a same-day delivery within the city might be as little as £10 (MacLeod, 2009). The situation is different for grocery products. These are often picked and delivered locally with means that the lead time between picking and delivery is much shorter. Tesco, for example, offers the possibility to deliver in the evening if the order is placed early in the morning and a grocery retailer in France gives the possibility to pick up the order 2 hours after placing it online (Croccel, 2011). This service is offered at the same delivery fee than placing the order earlier in the week.

Although the customer order value does not have a particular influence on the total delivery costs (Grando and Gosso, 2005), a higher customer order value reduces dramatically the relative costs of the delivery charge (Laseter et al., 2000). Grando and Gosso (2005) argue that time is the scarce resource in the delivery process and not the capacity. Therefore the cost to deliver a package will be the same regardless of size or value.

The cost efficiency of home delivery depends on a low average distance per order and the simultaneously high number of stops per hour (Punakivi and Saranen, 2001). There is a negative correlation between the customer density or drop density and the transit time of the truck and consequently with the cost of a single delivery (Grando and Gosso, 2005). Based on cost calculations for the Finish grocery market, Yrjölä (2003) found that a critical threshold exists at an average distance of 500 metres between drops. After this threshold a decrease in distance between drops (or an increase in sales) has no substantial effect on delivery efficiency (Yrjölä, 2003). However, this economy of scale in home delivery can only be reached in the unattended delivery situation (e.g. to a reception box) where packages can be delivered based on location on not on consumer availability (Yrjölä, 2003).

Small delivery windows lead to higher home delivery costs (Grando and Gosso, 2005).

Agatz (2009) calculated that replacing half day time windows with 2-hour time slots increases the costs by up to 25%. Also Nockold (2001) argues that removing short time windows can improve the transport costs by 27-36%, depending on drop density and the

number of drops per vehicle. Saranen and Smaros (2001 cited by Campbell and Savelsbergh, 2005) found that a half-hour delivery window as offered by Webvan was 5 times more expensive than the unattended deliveries offered by Streamline.

Unattended delivery provides the lowest cost of home delivery (Grando and Gosso, 2005; Punakivi and Saranen, 2001). Unattended deliveries lead to lower delivery times and better planning of the delivery round (Grando and Gosso, 2005). The delivery time per drop can be reduced from 10 minutes to 4 minutes, because there is no customer present to check off all the items in the order (Rowlands, 2001b). According to research in Finland, the costs of home deliveries with a reception or delivery box is 44-53%

lower than the standard of attended delivery within two-hour delivery time windows (Punakivi and Tanskanen, 2002). In the attended delivery situation, the delivery van has to drive back and forth, increasing the costs to about 2.7 times the cost of once-a-week unattended delivery (see figure 2.3) (Yrjölä, 2003). This is because the number of deliveries per hour will be 1.9 times higher (Punakivi and Tanskanen, 2002).

Unattended deliveries also level the demand during the day and can permit night-time delivery, improving the utilisation rate (Kämäräinen et al., 2001b).

Figure 2.3: Relative cost of home delivery options (Source: Yrjölä, 2003)

However, attended delivery might be needed in some situations, for example for security reasons, perishable goods, or large goods (Agatz et al., 2008a). To benefit from the cost savings of unattended delivery and still provide a secure delivery, several alternatives to unattended delivery are developed. The main alternatives, including access to home or outbuilding, reception box, collection and delivery point (CDP), or delivery to a local agency (McKinnon and Tallam, 2003) are discussed below.

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Next day del. 1 hr slot 12-9pm Same day del. 3 x 3hr slot 5-9 pm Next day del. to box 8am -6pm Fixed weekly delivery to box (next day)

transport cost per order (index)

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Access to home or outbuilding

One example of remote access control systems is Ahome4IT. Consumers can leave the key of their house or shed in a key box fixed to the outer wall of their house. Couriers, who want to deliver a package, can contact the company to gather the digital code of the key box, giving them access to the house or shed (Ahome4it, 2012).

Reception box

A reception box or drop box could be either a fixed internal box, a fixed external box, a mobile reception box, or a communal reception box (McKinnon and Tallam, 2003).

Secure boxes for on the doorstep were offered by BearBox, Homeport, and Dynamid (Anon, 2001; Rowlands, 2001a). However, these companies moved their service to the business-to-business market or were withdrawn (Rowlands, 2006). Another box, which was built into the wall, was offered by Giraffe marketing (Rowlands, 2004). The price of these build-in reception system, including the refrigerated section, cost around £ 7K in the UK and was considered too high for mainstream adoption (Rowlands, 2004).

Besides that, Xu et al. (2008) found in a survey of 125 online shoppers in the United Kingdom that consumers have concerns regarding the safety, space and planning permission regarding installing a secure box at the consumer’s home and favour deliveries to neighbours over using a reception box. Kämäräinen and Punakivi (2004), however, found other consumer perceptions. They asked consumers in Finland, who used the reception boxes for 2 months, about their experiences. Consumers reported that the reception box saves time, gives flexibility, gives independence from supplier timetables, reduces the need for carrying groceries, decreases the amount of impulse buying, and increases systematic purchasing. Also e-tailers appear to be in favour of reception boxes as it is an effective and efficient way of minimising delivery costs (Xu et al., 2008).

In the communal reception box situation, for example offered by ByBox (Rowlands, 2008), the box is shared with other consumers and is available to the user for one-off deliveries. After paying an additional delivery fee to Bybox, the delivery is made directly to the locker box where consumers can pick it up at a convenient time (Bybox, 2012). Amazon started to offer a similar service with locker boxes in London in 2011 (Henderson and Lamkin, 2011). The development of this solution is slow in the United Kingdom due to missing investments from carriers or retailers (Anon, 2005). However, the take-up of communal reception boxes is higher on the continent, as illustrated by

Deutsche Post’s Pack Station network and La Poste (Miller, 2008). In economic terms, the communal reception box is more attractive than a reception box. The payback period is calculated to be two or three years with an utilisation level of 75%, and three to five years with an utilisation level of 50% (Punakivi and Tanskanen, 2002). By comparison, an individual reception box will have a payback period between 6 and 13 years depending on the number of deliveries per day³. Further, the communal reception box provides low operational costs with a fairly small number (40-60) of deliveries per day (Punakivi and Tanskanen, 2002).

Collection and Delivery Point (CDP)

A CDP can be a local post office, workplace, existing retail outlets, or a purpose built collection centre. It offers the possibility to carriers to have a secured delivery without the need for re-scheduling deliveries to the consumers’ homes or making more than one trip (Cherrett and McLeod, 2005). After early examples as Dropzone1, m-box, Urbandrop and Collectpoint (Anon, 2000), delivery to local CDPs declined and was rarely used within the United Kingdom despite the fact that most consumers are willing to collect purchased items from local CDPs (Xu et al., 2008). Although this option can save delivery costs and time, the study shows that e-tailers were not very keen to offer a collection hub option to consumers (Xu et al., 2008). In the recent years the CDP market is growing. Kiala, started in 2001, has grown to over 7000 CDPs in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Spain, the Netherlands and in the last year also in the UK (Kiala, 2013a).

And Collect+ has grown to over 5000 CDPs in the UK in the past 3 years (Collectplus, 2013). These CDPs are mainly small retailers who benefit of additional consumers visiting their store (Kiala, 2013b).

Purpose built collection centres are used in the grocery market. These pick-up points or drive-throughs are widely tested in France since 2004 (Cavill, 2009). In 2012 Albert Heijn opened its first pick-up point for groceries products in the Netherlands (see figure 2.4).

3 The payback period is calculated by dividing the investment in the reception boxes by the reduced home delivery costs due to the reception boxes compared to a 2-hour delivery window.

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Figure 2.4: Pick-up point of Albert Heijn in Tilburg, the Netherlands

Especially for groceries, where the product margins are already small, CDPs may be viable in the long term. It provides a convenient and cost-effective alternative to home deliveries (Chappell, 2000). These pick-up points are built in easy accessible areas, for example next to the motorway, making it easier to reach than the local supermarket (Albert Heijn, 2012).

Local agency

This option is an extension of the CDP concept where the operator provides a delivery service to the online customer’s home at a convenient time (McKinnon and Tallam, 2003). One early example of this ‘collection and delivery’ service was Beck & Call⁴ which operated in several London boroughs (Anon, 2000).