Scheduling of inbound truck arrivals and shop-floor operation in a cross-dock platform, based on outbound trucks loading plan
Résumé
A cross-dock centre is an intermediate consolidation point in a supply chain, which links a set of suppliers with a
set of customers. This logistics strategy seeks to reduce lead time, decrease stock level and make economies in
transportation. In the shop floor, packages from inbound trucks are unloaded, moved across the platform, sorted
by destination and loaded onto outbound trucks. The international development of the automotive industry has
been supported in part by crossdocking platforms which link distant manufacturing plants with nearby first-tier
suppliers. Our research is based on a case of study at one of this platforms, from an important carmaker. The
majority of packages are moved directly from inbound to outbound zone, but some of them need to be repacked.
Outbound trucks are considered as an assembled product, which will be manufactured (loaded) only if all
components (packages) are available. Therefore, the planning process starts with outbound trucks’ loading plan
optimization (high complexity due to the diversity of packing types). Shop-floor activities and inbound trucks
deliveries are scheduled accordingly. We propose a linear programming model to optimize operation scheduling,
respecting outbound trucks’ loading plan. The objective is to minimize storage cost, manpower cost and inbound
delivery penalty cost (initial truck schedule can be modified). Constrains on the number of inbound and outbound
doors and on repacking zone capacity are also included. The model is implemented in CPLEX and tested on several
instances based on real-data.