Mobile fleet inventory: An integrated approach to fleet management for an on-demand delivery system

Abstract

On-demand delivery systems commonly rely on stationary facilities to organize operations and manage resources. While stationary facilities provide stability and structured coverage, they are inherently rigid and struggle to adapt to the spatial and temporal fluctuations of urban service demand. This study introduces an optimization framework for deploying Mobile Fleet Inventories (MFIs) to address operational inefficiencies in on-demand delivery systems. We formulate the problem as an MILP to optimize MFI deployment, where key decisions are the optimal number, placement of MFIs, and fleet size. We apply our model to a meal delivery platform in Amsterdam to demonstrate the applicability, stability and generalizability of the framework.