The large-scale online supermarket is a newly emerging online retailing mode which brings great convenience to people. Online supermarkets are characterized by having large amounts of daily orders with potentially multiple items, diverse delivery times, and a high order-split rate. Multiple shipments for one order caused by order splitting result in high cost and disturbance and a large number of discarded consumable packages at online retailers and customers, causing severe damage to the environment. Accordingly, research on split-order consolidation fulfilment is critical for the advancement of the practice and theory in the context of highly complex online retailing. This paper first analyzes the characteristics and the challenges associated with the split-order consolidation problem that online supermarket is confronting and summarizes the new operational process of split-order consolidation fulfilment. Then, a time–space network optimization model is built, and its corresponding solution algorithm is presented to solve the questions of where and when to consolidate the split orders. Finally, the computation results of the numerical experiments are provided to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm, and a sensitivity analysis of the relevant parameters is performed. This work highlights the effect of order consolidation processes and fulfilment methods on the order fulfilment decision-making for online supermarkets. The purpose of this article is to help pave the way for more effective online supermarket management and order implementation.

Logistical activities have a significant global environmental impact, necessitating the adoption of green logistics practices to mitigate environmental effects. The COVID-19 pandemic has further emphasized the urgency to address the environmental crisis. Operations research provides a means to balance environmental concerns and costs, thereby enhancing the management of logistical activities. This paper presents a comprehensive review of studies integrating operations research into green logistics. A systematic search was conducted in the Web of Science Core Collection database, covering papers published until June 3, 2023. Six keywords (green logistics OR sustainable logistics OR cleaner logistics OR green transportation OR sustainable transportation OR cleaner transportation) were used to identify relevant papers. The reviewed studies were categorized into five main research directions: Green waste logistics, the impact of costs on green logistics, the green routing problem, green transport network design, and emerging challenges in green logistics. The review concludes by outlining suggestions for further research that combines green logistics and operations research, with particular emphasis on investigating the long-term effects of the pandemic on this field.

In this study, we investigate a forest-based solution representation for split delivery vehicle routing problems (SDVRPs), which have several practical applications and are among the most difficult vehicle routing problems. The new solution representation fully reflects the nature of split delivery, and can help reduce the search space when used in heuristic algorithms. Based on the forest structure, we devise three neighborhood search operators. To highlight the effectiveness of this solution representation, we integrate these operators into a standard tabu search framework. We conduct extensive experiments on three main SDVRPs addressed in the literature: The basic SDVRP, the multidepot SDVRP, and the SDVRP with time windows. The experimental results show that the new forest-based solution representation is particularly effective in designing and implementing neighborhood operators, and that our new approach outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms on standard datasets.