Abstract
With time windows becoming increasingly prevalent in e-commerce, last-mile delivery faces growing challenges in balancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency across different geographical contexts. To address this, we leverage the Amazon Last-Mile Routing dataset along with additional real-world rural route data, utilize a solver built on OR-Tools to solve time window instances, and analyze the impact of time windows on route efficiency in both urban and rural areas. Our analysis identifies the different impact time windows have over urban and rural areas, particularly in vehicle use, where rural routes are more sensitive to shorter time window durations and higher time window frequencies. Our findings lead to the major conclusion that optimizing delivery time windows — favoring a smooth and balanced distribution and limiting narrow windows to under 20% of stops — enhances operational efficiency while balancing customer needs, particularly in rural context.
