On the service performance of alternative shipment consolidation policies

In order to compare the performances of alternative shipment consolidation policies, we develop closed-form expressions of the distribution of the maximum waiting time and the average order delay. We examine the tradeoff between the expected delivery frequency, as measured by the expected shipment consolidation cycle length, and the average order delay. The previous analytical results regarding shipment consolidation are aimed at optimizing the performances of alternative policies using cost-based criteria whereas our results are useful under service-based criteria.