Workforce Scheduling in the Era of Crowdsourced Delivery

Using crowdsourced delivery capacity, that is, individuals offering their vehicle and their time to perform deliveries, can allow companies to provide faster delivery options and more easily accommodate fluctuations in demand. However, because of the uncertainty associated with crowdsourced delivery capacity, ensuring service quality is more challenging. To prevent or mitigate any negative effects of the uncertainty associated with crowdsourced delivery capacity, companies may choose to also have a scheduled delivery workforce that they can control more effectively. We investigate continuous approximation and value function approximation methods for scheduling this workforce, that is, deciding their shifts (start time and duration) to achieve a service level target at minimum cost. An extensive computational study demonstrates the efficacy of our methods and provides insights into the use of crowdsourced delivery capacity.