What Happens Before the Last Mile? Exploring a Package’s Journey
CME Department Seminar
September 1, 2023
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM America/Chicago
Presenter: Dr. Carla A. Tejada.
Location: 1047 ERF
Abstract:
Urban freight studies of e-commerce activities and impacts tend to focus on last-mile movements of goods.
Little information is available to quantify e-commerce activity for residential deliveries of parcels upstream of
the last mile. In this exploratory study, we investigate the usefulness of a novel type of data—individual package
tracking records—to measure end-to-end e-commerce activity. Using a small case study, we measure distances, times, and speeds of service to characterize components of e-commerce supply chains and to understand related impacts on transportation networks. Our results detail the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges expected in using this type of data, as well as provide insights for future data collection efforts. Overall, our results indicate that package tracking records do provide information that is potentially useful to inform transportation planning but that further efforts are needed to establish appropriate technical and institutional frameworks to support large-scale analysis.
Speaker Bio:
Carla Tejada, Ph.D., is part of the 2023 Bridge-to-Faculty Scholar program at the Industrial Engineering
Department at the University of Illinois Chicago. She received her doctorate from the City College of New York
Civil Engineering Department in June 2023. Her research interests are modeling urban freight transportation,
network modeling optimization, and multimodal interactions in the urban scenario. Much of her research has
focused on measuring the social impacts of freight networks in cities and evaluating the existing freight policy.
While working towards her Ph.D., Carla was involved with the Charles B. Rangel Infrastructure Workforce
Initiative. In the center, Carla served as a curricula development assistant and a transportation module instructor. Carla also collaborated with the New York City Department of Transportation Pedestrian Unit, where she developed a model to measure a Pedestrian Demand Map at the zip code level for New York City.
Before joining City College, Carla worked in several Supply Chain Management areas, such as last-mile delivery and transportation at DHL Express and the procurements department at SONY Corporation of America. She also holds a master’s degree in supply chain management granted by the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador.
Date posted
Nov 1, 2023
Date updated
Nov 1, 2023