A Cross-Docking Approach for Farfetch Global Delivery

Abstract

Farfetch is an e-commerce platform with a exponential growth in the last years, but this company has a particular type of business. Farfetch does not hold stock, everything that its sold on farftech.com comes from partners, that are boutiques spread all over the world, that sell high-end fashion articles, that do not have an online presence and relay on Farfetch to have a global reach. When a client buys on ff.com, if more than one item is purchased, they can come from different boutiques placed in different points, for instance, one can belong to a Portuguese partner, and the other can be shipped from an Italian boutique. When this happens, the client will receive two different boxes, arriving at different times, with different tracking information, and this has a huge impact on the client satisfaction and the need to improve the client satisfaction originate the theme for this dissertation. The main objective of this thesis is building a cross-docking strategy to gain knowledge about this strategy, that is something new in the company, identifying the variables with the most impact in cross-docking, and what are Farfetch's limitations on implementing this type of logistics strategy. The project will study this approach to two different markets, one for the Chinese Market, and the second will be a Transatlantic Bridge between Europe and the United States of America. To develop this strategy the software used is AnyLogic, a simulation tool based on agents and discrete-time events, that allow simulating not only the operations inside the cross-dock but also control every agent involved in the process, for example, the operators.