Increase urban freight efficiency with delivery and servicing plan Jacques Leonardi a, ⁎, Michael Browne a , Julian Allen a , Tom Zunder b , Paulus T. Aditjandra b a University of Westminster, Department of Planning & Transport, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS, United Kingdom b Newrail, School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon-Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom abstract article info Article history: Received 5 February 2014 Received in revised form 2 October 2014 Accepted 2 October 2014 Available online xxxx Keywords: Delivery and Servicing Plan Urban freight transport Green logistics Supply chain management Delivery and Servicing Plan (DSP) is an innovative logistics concept for more efficient organisation of deliveries from the point of view of the receiver of the goods. DSP actions tested in this study include reducing the number of suppliers, grouping deliveries, selecting less distant suppliers and others. It is shown that DSP can help reduce externalities and lead to a substantial reduction of costs. A new tool was developed to calculate the benefits of different DSP options for businesses and the public sector. Reductions in costs and externalities exceeding 50% have been demonstrated in a few cases. Remaining difficulties with the concept are organisational issues, lack of knowledge, need to give external advisory support for shop owners and the limited number of successful ap- plications to date. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The paper presents the impacts expected from an innovative ap- proach to retail deliveries based on the Delivery and Servicing Plan (DSP) concept. The definition was born from a practical urban logistics concept developed in London in the context of transport policy needs, mainly to improve the efficiency of goods reception: “DSPs are intended to provide a framework to better manage all types of freight vehicle movement to and from individual buildings” including retail shops, of- fices, factories, or depots (Browne, Allen, Nemoto, Patier, & Visser, 2012). This is a logistics management concept focusing on efficiency gains that can be realised at the receiver end of the supply chain. The DSPs developed in London are similar to personal travel plans for busi- ness and the DSP programme is now an integral part of the London Freight Plan (TfL, 2008). One of the key ideas behind the DSP concept lies in “adjusting the conventional working methods of some of the stakeholders” (Verlinde, Macharis, & Witlox, 2012). The DSP concept aims to reduce traffic in certain hot-spot areas and main roads in co-operation with businesses. This study presents DSP case studies, presenting new data records and an evaluation of DSP's usefulness, impacts, and potential for future development. DSP is neither a mainstream area of research, nor a very important field of policy making; as only a few trials have taken place so far, very little investment in real business conditions activities has been made, and little literature has been published. Zunder, Aditjandra, and Carnaby (2012) presented the DSP concept in the context of the New- castle urban freight policy. The concept is a management oriented, urban freight policy innovation, at an early stage, with some prototypes developed in the last years, but far from reaching a stage where an up- scaling and an increasing market share could be envisaged. The review by Browne and Goodchild (2014) of existing approaches to tackle urban freight challenges recommends primary business and policy-oriented studies on the DSP concept. They argue that “perhaps one of the most striking [gap] that certainly existed until the past few years is the gap between those engaged primarily in urban freight modelling and those working on policy or business-related research is- sues” (Browne & Goodchild, 2014, p. 88). Modelling could determine the impact of DSP on emissions, congestion and the pattern of demand (Feliu, Ambrosini and Routhier, 2012). On the reduction of emissions, a classical bottom-up data collection approach could be adopted, similar to other studies such as those presented by Edwards and McKinnon (2010), Rizet, Browne, Cornelis, and Leonardi (2012), or Arvidsson, Woxenius, and Lammgård (2013) linking logistics delivery operations with performance measurements and fuel use records. Unlike these emission reduction studies, which are following the supply chain or ve- hicle approaches, the DSP study limits itself to the final link in the supply chain from the depot to the final customer. Analysis of the impact on congestion would involve a classical before and after study. It would assess the extent to which DSP increased load factors and resulted in fewer vehicle kilometres for the delivery of a given quantity of goods. The van round of a last mile logistics service provider can be used to illustrate the effect of DSP in reducing distance travelled per parcel. It is assumed that this van is usually filled every day on its delivery round with half its volume capacity at departure from the depot. When DSP is introduced, for example adding one or two addi- tional customers to be delivered by the same van on the same round and in the same area, the van load factor increases, but the total distance of the round increases only marginally. Thus the total distance per load unit diminishes, easing congestion. It is always assumed that the decline Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (2014) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: j.leonardi@westminster.ac.uk (J. Leonardi). RTBM-00156; No of Pages 7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2014.10.001 2210-5395/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Research in Transportation Business & Management Please cite this article as: Leonardi, J., et al., Increase urban freight efficiency with delivery and servicing plan, Research in Transportation Business & Management (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2014.10.001