Detailed Information on Publication Record

Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, countries locked their borders, and international shipping deteriorates drastically. Simultaneously, social distancing increased the need for immediate online consumption and fast home delivery. In the non-digital world, products still need to be shipped to their destination using trucks, trains, airplanes, and ships. Simultaneously, requirements for volumes of goods, transport costs, external limiting factors, etc. must be precisely defined. The article aims to find the optimal location selection solution based on the created mathematical model of the Modified Steiner-Weber Problem with restrictive conditions. The model allows for the central warehouse's optimal location and minimizes distribution costs from the central warehouse to sub-warehouses/branches located in individual EU countries. The mathematical model has been applied to a case study of a selected e-commerce dealing, which has established branches in capital cities but does not have an established central warehouse. Our proposed model results show that the best location for a central location and storage center concerning the e-commerce environment, including minimum annual transport costs, is near Bristol in United Kingston. Eighty-six per cent of the companies in the study plan to use on-demand warehousing in the next three to five years, and the solution enabling this evolution has been a combination of manufacturing where the production costs are optimal, just-in-time shipping, highly automated fulfilment centers, and, to a growing extent, mobile connectivity.