Logistics Improvement for Timely Food Delivery Report

Abstract

The current report is provided at the request of the management of the company to investigate complaints about late food deliveries and the coldness of food. It supplies an analysis of the problems and proposes ways to address them. These ways include certain changes to the manner in which the couriers work, and warnings to the customers that the food will be delivered within a certain time interval.

Purpose and findings

This report addresses the problems of client complaints about late food deliveries and food coldness. It was found out that late deliveries occur mostly during the delivery of food to the third client on a single courier’s route, whereas the food may be cold even when there is no lateness and the delivery is made to the first customer.

Recommendations

• Limit the number of clients that a courier visits on a single route to two (rather than three);
• Warn the clients that the food will be delivered within a certain time interval;
• Purchase thermal boxes for the couriers and additionally wrap food in thermal bags;
• Observe whether the current number of couriers will be sufficient to meet the future needs of the company

Introduction

This report addresses the problems of the complaints of the customers about the healthy food delivery service. The following problems are addressed: a) late deliveries of food to clients and b) the complaints that the food is cold upon delivery. After providing the conclusions based on the findings and the recommendations that may help address the problems, the analysis itself is provided. The data that was gathered and used for the analysis is provided in the Appendix. The report has a number of potential limitations; for instance, it was impossible to calculate whether the current number of couriers would be sufficient to satisfy the needs that would emerge after implementing the recommendations, so it was needed to rely on an estimate instead and to suggest conducting further observations after the recommendations are implemented.

Conclusions

The following conclusions can be drawn:

• Late deliveries occurred mainly when the couriers delivered food to the third client on a single route.
• Food was cold mostly on the second and third delivery, but it was sometimes cold even on the first delivery.

Based on these findings, some recommendations to address the problems in question are provided.

Recommendations

Based on the analysis, it is recommended to do the following:

1. Limit the number of clients to whom a courier brings food during one route to two (instead of three);
2. Warn the clients who make an order that the food will be delivered at the arranged time ±10-12 minutes;
3. Purchase thermal boxes for the couriers, and additionally wrap the food in thermal bags;
4. Further, observe whether the current number of couriers will be sufficient to make the deliveries after implementing recommendation #1 from this list.

Findings and Discussion

Addressing customers’ complaints is paramount for any service (Rushton, Croucher, & Baker, 2017). Therefore, the complaints about late delivery of food and its coldness were investigated in detail. It was taken into account that the couriers usually fetched food at the office of the company for three clients at most, so that the food would not become too cold, and then delivered it to the client.

Methods

To investigate the problem and measure the performance of the delivery service (Christopher, 2016), a sample of 30 deliveries by different couriers was chosen so that 10 deliveries would be to the first client, 10 deliveries would be to the second customer, and 10 deliveries would be to the third customer on couriers’ routes. The couriers were asked to write down the time at which they delivered the food. The couriers were assured that there would be no repercussions for late deliveries. These times were compared to the planned time of delivery. Also, the clients were phoned afterward and asked if the food was cold. All the results were transferred to an Excel worksheet and analyzed (Salkind, 2013); they can be found in Appendix.

Findings

From Appendix, it is easy to see that the first customers on couriers’ delivery routes received their food approximately on time (i.e., either several minutes prior to or, more rarely, several minutes after the planned time of delivery). On the other hand, second and third clients on the delivery routes gained their food with some lateness. A t-test was run to check whether the difference in delivery lateness to the second and the third client was statistically significant (Salkind, 2013; Warner, 2013); see Table 1 below. It is easy to notice that the difference was significant: t(18)=2.10, p<.001, two-tailed. Also, it can be seen that for the delivery to the second client, mean lateness=6.2 (standard deviation=17.067^0.5=4.13), and that for the delivery to the third client, mean lateness=15.5 (standard deviation=17.167^0.5=4.14).

Table 1. The t-Test for the Delivery to the Second and the Third Customer.

Discussion

All in all, on average, serious lateness occurred when the food was delivered to the third client. The deliveries to the first client usually were timely, whereas the deliveries to the second customer were usually slightly late. Also, from the data in Appendix, it is apparent that the food was cold more often when delivered to the third client and with lateness, but there were cases when the food was cold even on the delivery to the first customer and without lateness.

Justification of Recommendations

Given these facts, recommendations for solving the discovered problems are provided above in the Recommendations subsection. They can be justified as follows:

1. Limiting the maximum number of clients to two (instead of three) is recommended because the deliveries to the second client were only slightly late;
2. Warning the clients that the food will be delivered within a time interval may help avert complaints of late delivery. The number ±10-12 minutes was chosen to account for both early deliveries to the first clients on a route, and for possible late deliveries (mean lateness ±1-1.5 standard deviations) to the second client, which should cover the majority of cases (Warner, 2013);
3. Thermal boxes and thermal bags should be used to prevent the food from getting cold (it was sometimes cold even on delivery to the first customer);
4. Because currently, the couriers sometimes have downtime (they sometimes wait until an order is being prepared), and because there is not always three clients on one route, it is possible that the current number of couriers will suffice if the number of deliveries will be limited to two instead of three. However, further observations and analyses are needed to ensure that this is so.

References

Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics and supply chain management (5th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education.

Rushton, A., Croucher, P., & Baker, P. (2017). The handbook of logistics and distribution management (6th ed.). New York, NY: KoganPage.

Salkind, N. J. (2013). Excel Statistics: A quick guide (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Warner, R. M. (2013). Applied statistics: From bivariate through multivariate techniques (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Appendix

In the measured sample of deliveries, the lateness and the coldness of food was as follows: