PhD Defence Alp Arslan
In his dissertation 'Operational Strategies for On-demand Delivery Services’ Alp Arslan focusses on the operational problems arising in on-demand delivery services, and he explores how to improve these services with help of the sharing economy and online platforms. Alp has published in the Transportation Science and presented his work at several international conferences. He has also served as an ad-hoc reviewer of various journals including Transportation Science, Transportation Research Part C. Alp currently works as a Research Scientist at the School of Information Systems at the Singapore Management University. Alp will defend his dissertation in the Senate Hall at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Thursday, 21 November 2019 at 13:30. His supervisors were Prof. dr. Rob Zuidwijk (RSM) and Dr. ir. Niels Agatz (RSM). Other members of the Doctoral Committee are Prof. dr. Alan Erera (Georgia Institute of Technology), Prof. dr. Kees Jan Roodbergen (University of Groningen), Prof. dr. Rene de Koster (RSM),Prof. dr. Rommert Dekker (ESE), Dr. Mathias Klapp (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and Dr. Remy Spliet (ESE).
About Alp Arslan
Alp Arslan was born in Istanbul, Turkey, on the March 20th , 1987. He studied Industrial Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and Sabanci University, in Turkey. In 2014, he obtained his M.Sc. degree in Operations Research and Statistics at University North Carolina, Chapel Hill in the USA with a thesis on Flexible Products in Revenue Management. In 2014, Alp became a Ph.D. candidate at the Technology and Operations Management Department of Rotterdam School of Management at the Erasmus University Rotterdam under the supervision of Professor Rob Zuidwijk and Dr. Niels Agatz.
Alp's research focusses on the operational problems arising in on-demand delivery services, and he explores how to improve these services with help of the sharing economy and online platforms. Alp has published in the Transportation Science and presented his work at several international conferences. He has also served as an ad-hoc reviewer of various journals including Transportation Science, Transportation Research Part C. Alp currently works as a Research Scientist at the School of Information Systems at the Singapore Management University.
Thesis Abstract
On-demand delivery is a new last-mile delivery service, in which customers are expected to receive their purchased goods within the same day, sometimes even within an hour. This service may increase customer satisfaction and therefore boosts online shopping sales. However, it also leads to several operational challenges. We focus mainly on the challenge of short lead times that make delivery consolidation difficult. As a result, canonical last-mile strategies aiming to attain the economy of scale become obsolete, and consequently, they cannot answer the requirements of these expedited services. This dissertation proposes innovative models designed to utilize existing traffic flows and brick-and-mortar store infrastructures. Numerical experiments demonstrate the viability and merits of these models. The results show that the power of the crowd and effectively integrated retail stores can help on-demand delivery service operators to reduce operational costs.
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