Date: Friday, September 18th,  2020 

 

Time:  9:00am-10:30am 

 

Zoom url:  https://zoom.us/j/94475648819?

 

Shipping a product from a warehouse shelf to a customer doorstep might look simple initially, but it is a complicated and expensive operation in reality. Moving the product from the last distribution hub in the distribution channel to the final destination (residential or business address), also known as Last-Mile Delivery (LMD), is the costliest and time-consuming phase.  Studies show that LMD accounts for 53% to 70% of the total cost of transportation. The global cost of LMD in 2018 was $9.98 billion and is expected to reach $45.27 billion by 2027.Moreover, with the rapid growth of e-commerce and online retailers' and customers' expectations of same-day-delivery and on-demand delivery, LMD has become an urgent logistic challenge. For instance, Canada offers online retailers significant growth opportunities with a population of over 35 million. However, with a landmass that exceeds 9.98 million square kilometres, many find it challenging to get their products into their customers' hands.   

 

One of the main challenges in the LMD operations is proof-of-delivery (PoD).  It is the responsibility of any LMD solution to provide Proof of Delivery (POD) to confirm that the purchased item is delivered to the customer (buyer). It makes both sender and receiver accountable because POD acts as proof that the sender sends the package to the correct destination, and the buyer receives the product in good condition. Most of today, PoD solutions uses paper and pen to collect customer's signature as PoD and even when handheld devices are used, it only to collect buyer signature. Developing a secure and trusted PoD solution will increase logistics accuracy, improve customer experience, enhance packages visibility and tracking and reduce operational cost. 

 

Recently, digital signature and new technologies such as blockchain introduced an opportunity to improve logistics and LMD operations. Several works in the literature proposed PoD using blockchain and other cryptographic schemes. In our research, we investigated existing work; we selected the most promising solutions in the literature and implemented those solutions to test them against several scenarios. Based on our analysis, we identified several limitations in the existing work; some of these limitations are related to security, trust, and scalability.  Finally, we propose a new PoD scheme using blockchain, blind signature and a reputation-based trust model to overcome existing limitations in the state-of-the-art PoD solutions. 

 

Keywords: last mile, proof of delivery, blind signatures, reputation-based trust model 

 

 

 

Internal Reader: Dr. Arunita Jaekel     

 

External Reader: Dr. Bill Anderson      

 

Advisor: Dr Sherif Saad Ahmed

 

 

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