Scheduling trucks and storage operations in a multiple-door cross-docking terminal considering multiple storage zones

Abstract

Cross-docking is a logistics process in which products are unloaded through receiving docks and then transferred to shipping docks with almost no storage in between. In this paper, a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) is proposed to optimise the scheduling, storage, assignment and sequencing of trucks at receiving and shipping docks for a problem inspired from a multiple-door cross-dock facility of an industrial partner with multiple temporary storage zones. The multiple storage zones are separated and located in the centre of the cross-dock handling different types of products. The objective is to minimise the total tardiness of inbound and outbound trucks. A heuristic (H) is proposed to find an initial solution. Then, three meta-heuristics are developed, namely Random Search (RS), Tabu Search (TS) and Simulated Annealing (SA) to improve the scheduling of trucks in order to minimise the tardiness of inbound and outbound trucks. Experimental results indicate that the three meta-heuristics (RS, TS and SA) are able to find good quality results within reasonable computational times. Finally, since SA showed the best performance compared to RS and TS, it was chosen to be compared to the current manual method using discrete event simulation.

Keywords:

• Cross-dock scheduling
• mathematical programming
• multiple storage zones
• multiple products types
• Tabu search
• simulated annealing

Acknowledgements

The presented research work was supported by the ELSAT2020 project of CPER sponsored by the French Ministry of Sciences, the Hauts de France region and the FEDER. This work was also supported by the ANR PI-NUTS Project (grant ANR-14-CE27-0015).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The presented research work was supported by the ELSAT2020 project of CPER sponsored by the French Ministry of Sciences, the Hauts de France region and the FEDER. This work was also supported by the ANR PI-NUTS Project (grant ANR-14-CE27-0015).

Notes on contributors

Tarik Chargui

Tarik Chargui received his PhD from the Université Polytechique Hauts-de-France (France) and the University of Abdelmalek Essaadi in Tetouan (Morocco). He is currently a post-doc at the Université Polytechique Hauts-de-France. His research works and interests are on cross-dock scheduling and supply chain modelling and optimisation in the Physical Internet context using applied mathematics, meta-heuristics and simulation. Tarik Chargui is the author and co-author of more than 10 journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings.

Abdelghani Bekrar

Abdelghani Bekrar received his engineering degree in computer science (1999) from INI (Algerian National high school), Master degree from ECN (French National high school) and his PhD (2007) from the University of Technology of Troyes (UTT), France. Abdelghani Bekrar is currently an associate professor at the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France. His research interests include Metaheuristic design and implementation and Hard optimisation for engineer applications and supply chain management. He is the author of more than 32 articles in international journals and 45 publications in international conferences in the field of manufacturing and transportation systems and he is involved in several research projects.

Mohamed Reghioui

Mohamed Reghioui is a full professor at the National School of Business and Management of Tangier and affiliated with the National School of Applied Sciences, University Abdelmalek Essaadi of Tetouan Morocco. He obtained his PhD degree in operations research, logistics and transportation from the University of Technology of Troyes in France. His research works and interests are on supply chains and industrial systems modelling and optimisation using methods of applied mathematics. Mohamed Reghioui is the author and co-author of several journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings.

Damien Trentesaux

Damien Trentesaux (male) is full professor at the LAMIH UMR CNRS 8201 research lab of the Université Polytechique Hauts-de-France (France). His areas of interest concern the sustainable control and optimisation of discrete event systems (manufacturing, transport, logistics and services) and their efficient and effective interaction with the human in the context of Industry 4.0 and industrial cyber-physical systems. Prof. Trentesaux has supervised 16 PhD thesis and is author and co-author of more than 200 peer reviewed publications in journals, books and chapters of books and conference proceedings.