Impact of flexible docks on truck scheduling in cross-docking environment

At cross docking terminals shipments of inbound trucks are unloaded, sorted and loaded onto outbound trailers with no or a considerably reduced amount of stock. The shipments typically spend less than 24 hours at the facility, sometimes less than an hour. In this study, we address cross docking from a scheduling point-of-view. We extend the often considered two types of docks in truck scheduling, namely dedicated inbound docks (also called receiving doors) and dedicated outbound (or shipping) docks, which are mutually exclusive, and include flexible docks that can be used either as an inbound or as an outbound doors at any time. We shall assume a direct focus on operational costs by considering the cost of handling the temporarily stocked shipments inside the terminal over the planning horizon, as well as cost of tardiness assigned to outbound trailers. An MILP formulation is presented, in which we are interested in the trade-off between these two cost factors. The impact of flexible doors is analyzed via CPLEX implementation and a heuristic algorithm.Contact Information: