Title: Scheduling trucks in fruit cross docks as an open shop problem with edge colouring

Authors: Mohammad Gholami; Masoud Rabbani; Mehran Samavati

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 11155-4563 Tehran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 11155-4563 Tehran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 11155-4563 Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Cross docking is believed to be an efficient approach to control the physical flow of the supply chain. Due to its importance, companies these days feel the necessity of careful planning of the inbound and outbound flows. As a result, they can reach customer satisfaction milestone and also time and cost reduction. In this paper, we study fruit and vegetable cross docks which are different than the other forms of cross docks. In such cross docks, time plays an important role and it must be reduced to the minimum length possible so that we can decrease the cooling and spoilage expenses to a great extent. We modelled the inbound docks as an open shop problem in order to minimise the unloading time of the inbound trucks, then we developed a heuristic solution procedure method based on graph theory to deal with this problem.

Keywords: cross docks; truck scheduling; open shop problem; graph theory; edge colouring; logistics; cross docking; fruit and vegetables; modelling; inbound docks; unloading time; inbound trucks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAL.2015.068894

International Journal of Automation and Logistics, 2015 Vol.1 No.2, pp.140 - 149

Received: 12 Jan 2013
Accepted: 12 Jul 2013
Published online: 25 Apr 2015 *

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