Integrated scheduling and vehicle routing at cross-dock distribution centre: a simulated annealing approach

• Main Authors: Saxena, Shikhar, Piplani, Rajesh
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering; Cross-Docking; Routing and Scheduling
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171034
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

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.