This problem is inspired by a real problem where a company owning a CD platform has a set of requirements for leasing its loading and unloading docks for a determined period to allied companies. Another example comes from the principality of Monaco where policymakers created an urban platform for all of the distributers to the principality for complying with vehicle mobility restrictions within the city ( Paché, 2008).įollowing current trends on mutualization of logistics resources, this work solves a truck-scheduling optimization problem for a CD platform that mutualizes its docks with other allied companies. This allows them to distribute their cars globally at better rates ( Automotive Logistics, 2010). For instance, the alliance Renault-Nissan wherein the negotiation with the shipping companies is carried out conjunctively. Car manufactures are among some of the examples for mutualization. Within the alternative, there is the mutualization of resources for reducing operational and investment costs. Given to current challenges in the companies, they are looking for alternatives to be more competitive. This decision is made aiming a synchronization between both inbound and outbound trucks that allows the reduction of waiting times for the trucks, their unnecessary displacement, or their temporary storing ( Boysen et al., 2010). One of the most common ones is determining the order at which the inbound and outbound trucks need to be served, as well as the assignation of the trucks at the docks. To achieve these benefits at a CD platform, different activity scheduling problems need to be solved. When using a CD platform, it is expected to lower the storing and recovery times therefore, eliminating their associated costs. Within traditional logistics, there are five standard processes in storing: reception, sorting, storing, recovery, and delivery ( Boloori Arabani et al., 2010). This model is used the companies such as Grupo Familia or Sodimac, which allows them to have a reduction in transportation costs ( Siguenza, 2016). Moreover, CD is used, for instance, at retailers for obtaining a last-mile distribution ( Boysen & Fliedner, 2010). It consists in transferring products from inbound trucks to outbound ones ( van Belle et al., 2012) without storing or with a short one. Keywords : Cross docking platform+ Mutualization+ Scheduling problem+ MILP formulation.Ĭross docking (CD) is a logistics distribution strategy used by many companies for arriving to clients faster hence, being more competitive. Moreover, we found that all the instances accepted the requirements showing that it is economically interesting to lease docks. The MILP formulation obtains acceptable results. For the remaining instances, the MILP formulation obtains an average optimized gap of 8.95%. Using a commercial solver, the MILP formulation can optimally solve 65/128 instances based on a real operation. To solve this problem, this work proposes a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation. Considering that the availability of the docks is linked to scheduling the trucks at the company’s loading and unloading docks, the decision to accept the requirements must be made along with the decisions for scheduling the trucks. This work pioneers the studies of the resource mutualization at CD operations solving at scheduling problem, where there is a set of requirements for leasing the loading and unloading docks for a period, and the company owning the docks can accept or decline each requirement. This paper studies a new Cross-Docking (CD) scheduling problem inspired by the trend of resource mutualization at CD operations where a company owning a CD platform can lease its docks to other companies.
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