Designing a sustainable freight transportation network with cross-docks

Abstract

This study aims to develop a sustainable freight transportation network considering capacitated cross-docks for minimising the overall supply chain costs, including carbon emission cost. The problem is inspired by a major retail company based in India, which would like to expand its product portfolio in the new region. A mathematical model is developed to minimise total costs encompassing transportation cost, pipeline and retailers inventory cost, fixed cost of cross-dock and carbon emission costs. The deterministic time dependant demand, multiple products and multiple sourcing and distribution are some of the challenges faced by the retail industry. A two-level self-adaptive variable neighbourhood search algorithm is applied to solve a computationally complex problem. The results based on a two-level self-adaptive variable neighbourhood search algorithm are compared with the variable neighbourhood search algorithm to test the robustness of the developed model. Results reveal that an increase in retailers over suppliers significantly influences the number of open cross-docks. A multiple-case scenario approach captures the implications of varying capacity on the number of open cross-docks; thus, supporting the freight distribution managers in making sustainability-driven decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable freight transportation
• cross-docking
• transportation
• inventory
• mathematical modelling
• variable neighbourhood search (VNS)

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

D. G. Mogale

D. G. Mogale, Dr, is a Lecturer in Logistics and Operations Management at Cardiff Business School, U.K. He completed his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Before joining Cardiff Business School, he was affiliated with Cranfield School of Management, U.K. as a Visiting Researcher. His research interests include supply chain network modelling and optimisation, supply chain risk and resilience, sustainability and food supply chains. In past, he has worked on a few projects funded by European Union, Swiss Government and the Indian Government as a Research Assistant. He has published several papers in leading operations and logistics management journals.

Arijit De

Arijit De, Dr, is an Assistant Professor in Management Science at The University of Manchester. Arijit received Ph.D. degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Previously, Arijit worked as a Lecturer in Operations Management with Newcastle University, United Kingdom. Arijit was associated as a Co-Investigator – Operations Research Expert with VALUMICS (https://valumics.eu/) which received funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme. Prior to this, Arijit worked at Loughborough University, U.K. and The University of Hong Kong. Arijit has authored several papers published in International Journals (peer-reviewed).

Abhijeet Ghadge

Abhijeet Ghadge, Dr, is an Associate Professor/Reader of Supply Chain Management at Cranfield School of Management, U.K. He holds Ph.D. in Operations and Supply Chain Management from Loughborough University, U.K., and M.Tech. in Industrial Engineering and Management from Indian Institute of Technology, India. He has over 14 years of industrial, academic and consulting experience working with a wide range of U.K., European and Asian organisations. Dr Ghadge has published over 70 research papers, including 45 journal articles in leading operations, logistics and supply chain management journals. He follows practice-driven approach to problems across the broad domains of supply chain risk, sustainability and Industry 4.0.

Manoj Kumar Tiwari

Manoj Kumar Tiwari (FNAE, FNASc, FIISE), Prof., is Director, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, India. He is also a Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He received B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India, in 1986, M.Tech. in Production Engineering from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Prayagraj, India, in 1990, and Ph.D. in the Department of Production Engineering from University of Jadavpur. He is actively involved in research relevant to the applications of optimisation, modelling, decision support systems, and data mining in the domain of logistics, supply chain management, and manufacturing systems.