Alibaba VRP Algorithms Have Enabled Its On-Time Hour Level Delivery
A pioneering retail model enables the delivery of Alibaba’s e-commerce and grocery products through its logistics networks to customers in 30 minutes to two hours, from the time their order was placed. A vehicle routing algorithm was designed to optimize warehouse order picking operations and delivery routes. The algorithms are built on large neighborhood searches and deep reinforcement learning and can achieve 80%-90% optimal performance under tight computational time limitations.