Examining environmental sustainability in last-mile delivery: a quality function deployment analysis

Abstract

Considering the unprecedented growth in last-mile delivery (LMD) of goods in the e-commerce business, the paper aims to analyze its related environmental sustainability concerns. It involves prioritizing the barriers to sustainable LMD and recommending countermeasures to minimise the growing adverse impact of last-mile logistics on the environment. The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) approach is applied to convert the LMD barriers into sustainable LMD design requirements. It utilizes Delphi approach to capture inputs for the development of the House of Quality (HOQ) framework. The analysis from the HOQ has highlighted that four dominant barriers contribute approximately 70% to the total sustainability issues of LMD. These are high emissions due to fossil-fuelled vehicles, lack of consumer awareness, increasing traffic congestion due to delivery vehicles, and growing expectations from today’s end-consumers. Five out of the nine countermeasures identified together have a significant 72% contribution in mitigating the adverse impact of the growing LMD.