Integrated scheduling and vehicle routing at cross-dock distribution centre: a simulated annealing approach
by Shikhar Saxena; Rajesh Piplani
International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IJISE), Vol. 44, No. 4, 2023

Abstract: Cross-docking is a popular strategy for distributing products with short shelf-life that must be delivered within their pre-specified time windows to customers. Cross-docks receive shipments from suppliers which are stored in a temporary storage area before being consolidated and transferred to outbound vehicles for delivery to customers. This research tackles the joint problems of vehicle routing and scheduling at the cross-dock, along with product consolidation, by means of a mixed-integer programming model with the objective of minimising the total cost of operations. Our approach does not pre-cluster customers into zones and allows vehicles to deliver in less than truckload. To solve real-life sized problems, we develop simulated annealing algorithms which can solve the instances in 2-3 hours, achieving close to optimal solutions, making them suitable for decision support at cross-dock distribution centres, which process dozens of vehicles and deliver to hundreds of customers daily.

Online publication date: Wed, 09-Aug-2023

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IJISE):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com