SOLFI: An Integrated Platform for Sustainable Urban Last-Mile Logistics’ Operations—Study, Design and Development

Abstract

Sustainable urban logistics has an important impact on the cities, which emphasizes the need for better management of logistics activities, including the usage of environmentally friendly transportation. The sustainability of cities, a concern that is on the agenda, is a very important topic pertaining to current political and societal issues. In this sense, although collaboration among urban logistics stakeholders on projects can be challenging, this effort pays off when there is a significant result for the sustainability of cities. This paper aims to present an Information System, named SOLFI (Sistema de Otimização para a Logística urbana com Fluxos Integrados), for planning management and control of urban logistics based on sustainability that integrates the transport of passengers and freight, using the city bus network and bicycles to perform last-mile deliveries. To develop the SOLFI solution and to ensure co-creation through a participative design approach, an agile methodology was used. In terms of results, the SOLFI integrates different agents in the movement of goods in urban centers with less polluting and small vehicles, in particular buses and bicycles. It represents a decision support system that is intended to operate in real-time, managing the entire process from the request until the load delivery to the final destination, to simplify, automate, and improve the urban logistics process. Thus, the main characteristics of SOLFI are to manage all the information required for this process in order to: (i) request quotation and acceptance management; (ii) deliver plan development to all the agents involved; (iii) manage the loads along the network; (iv) allow the tracking and control of requests along the network; and (v) enable replanning due to various possible disruptions that may occur during the process. SOLFI’s distinctive characteristic and main contribution result from the integration of all the transportation network and all agents in the same platform while considering synchronization among involved agents. The SOLFI solution allows for the reduction of traditional flows of goods, taking advantage of the availability of public passenger transport (buses) to perform the main travel distance within the city and the use of bicycles as a last-mile step. In this way, there is a reduction in the number of polluting vehicles in the city, meeting sustainability practices.