Agent based digital twin of sorting terminal to improve efficiency and resiliency in parcel delivery

Open economy, globalization and effect of Covid19 pandemic are transforming the consumer behavior rapidly. The business is nudging consumers towards hyper consumption through online shopping, e-commerce and other conveniences with affordable cost. The companies from courier, express and parcel (CEP) industry are trying to capitalize on this opportunity by tying up with business to consumers (B2C) companies with a promise of delivering parcels to the doorstep in an ever-shrinking time window. In this endeavor, the conventional optimization-based planning approach to manage the fixed parcel payload is turning out to be inadequate. The CEP companies need to quickly adapt to the situation more frequently so as to be efficient and resilient in this growing demand situation. We propose an agent-based digital twin of the sorting terminal, a key processing element of parcel delivery operation, as an experimentation aid to: (i) explore and arrive at the right configuration of the existing sorting terminal infrastructure, (ii) be prepared for possible outlier conditions, and (iii) identify plausible solutions for mitigating the outlier conditions in an evidence-backed manner. This paper presents digital twin of the sorting terminal and demonstrates its use as “in silico” experimentation aid for domain experts to support evidence-backed decision-making.