Computers & Industrial Engineering 92 (2016) 5056

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Computers & Industrial Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/caie

Cross dock scheduling with fixed outbound trucks departure times under
substitution condition q
S. Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh, S.M.T. Fatemi Ghomi , M. Sheikh Sajadieh
Department of Industrial Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, 424 Hafez Avenue, 1591634311 Tehran, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Nowadays, cross docking is used as a concept to improve the response time and it reduces the inventory
Received 7 February 2015 holding cost significantly. In some operational cases, inbound trucks leave the cross dock outbound doors
Received in revised form 27 October 2015 in predefined departure times. In this paper, we propose an inbound truck scheduling model based on
Accepted 3 December 2015
fixed outbound trucks departure times. Indeed, it is assumed that delayed loads are stored in temporary
Available online 11 December 2015
storage until the next outbound trucks departure time with the same destination. Furthermore, accord-
ing to the post-distribution concept, it is assumed the other destination loads can be replaced with the
Keywords:
delayed loads. This paper finds the best sequence of inbound trucks based on the loads substitution con-
Cross dock
Scheduling
cept. To solve the model, a heuristic algorithm is developed and numerical tests are given to compare the
Post-distribution results with the optimal solution. The results show using loads substitution concept will reduce cross
Departure time dock holding costs until 27%.
Product substitution 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Heuristic algorithm

1. Introduction introduce a classification of deterministic truck scheduling and

Cross docking has known as a logistic strategy and received a lot
of attention in the last few years. Many companies use cross dock
networks to reduce the inventory, material handling and trans-
portation costs. Cross dock reduces the items price significantly
because 30% of an items price is related to the distribution process
(Apte & Viswanathan, 2000). The cross dock implementations in
different companies such as Wal-Mart (Stalk, Evans, & Shulman,
1992), Goodyear GB Ltd (Kinnear, 1997), and Dots (Napolitano,
2011) show its importance in the competitive conditions. In a cross
dock system, products move from the manufacturing plant to the
customers with no or little storage levels (Maknoon & Baptiste,
2009). As a cross docking literature review, Van Belle,
Valckenaers, and Citruses (2012) presented an overview of cross
docking concept. They introduced characteristics and main topics
in a cross dock system and discussed about previous researches.
Truck inbound and outbound scheduling, dock door assignment,
labor and resource management and material handling are some
difficulties that must be managed in a cross dock center. Cross dock
scheduling is one of the most important issues taken into consider-
ation in recent cross dock researches. In this area, Boysen and
Fliedner (2010) reviewed cross dock scheduling literatures. They
q
This manuscript was processed by Area Editor (Subhash C. Sarin).
Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +98 21 64545381.
E-mail address: fatemi@aut.ac.ir (S.M.T. Fatemi Ghomi).
future research in relation to interdependent planning problems
and real-world truck scheduling. Berghman, Briand, Leus, and
Lopez (2012) proposed a truck scheduling model to minimize the
inventory level during the product transfer. They assumed that
infinite resources are available during cross dock scheduling.
Moreover, Ladier and Alpan (2013) proposed an integer model to
minimize the time windows penalties for the inbound and out-
bound trucks. Their model schedules the inbound and outbound
trucks based on the earliness and tardiness.
In a cross dock system, unloaded products are stored in tempo-
rary storages to prepare for loading in outbound trucks (Agustina,
Lee, & Piplani, 2011; Boysen, 2010; Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh,
Akbarpour Shirazi, Fatemi Ghomi, & Hosseini, 2013). Boloori
Arabani, Fatemi Ghomi, and Zandieh (2011) expressed that the
coordination between inbound and outbound trucks is an essential
target to reduce the inventory holding costs and increase the turn-
over of products in a cross dock center. Indeed, in scheduling prob-
lems, inventory holding costs play an important role to find the
best sequence of inbound and outbound trucks. In this concept,
we can refer to Li, Lim, and Rodrigues (2004), Boloori Arabani
et al. (2011), Boloori Arabani, Fatemi Ghomi, and Zandieh (2010),
Boysen (2010), Boyzer and Carlo (2008), Buijs, Vis, and Carlo
(2014), Ghobadian, Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, Javanshir, and Naderi-
Beni (2012), and Sadykov (2012). Moreover, Alpan, Larbi, and
Penz (2011) propose a model based on the cross dock total inven-
tory costs. They considered multiple receiving and shipping door in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2015.12.005
0360-8352/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 S. Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 92 (2016) 5056
cross dock environment and used a bounded dynamic program-
ming to find optimal or near optimal solution. To decrease tempo-
rary storage level, Forouharfard and Zandieh (2010) scheduled
receiving and shipping trucks in cross docking systems. They found
the best sequence of receiving and shipping trucks based on min-
imizing the total number of products stored in temporary storages.
In the most cross dock scheduling researches, inventory holding is
considered to decrease as much as possible. Thus, this paper finds
the best sequence of inbound trucks through the minimizing the
total inventory holding costs.
On the other hand, some companies, especially in postal ser-
vices and retailing industries use fixed outbound trucks departure
time for the steady and constant flow of product. Van Belle et al.
(2012) expressed that in some cases, outbound trucks have to
depart in a certain due date. They explained in the operational
characteristics section that in the parcel delivery sector, outbound
trucks leave cross dock outbound doors at a fixed departure time.
Boysen and Fliedner (2010) expressed in their paper that for the
industries with small and low valued shipments, the delay of ship-
ment is not acceptable. They explained that the postal services and
less-than-truck load service providers schedule outbound trucks
based on the fixed outbound trucks departure times. They
assumed that the outbound trucks with a determined destination
leave the terminal gates only in one departure time and several
departure times are not allowed to a specific destination in a plan-
ning horizon (24 h). These assumptions are not practical in some
postal services and retailing industries. In many postal services,
there are several predetermined departure times less than 24 h
to a specific destination. So, it would acceptable for the managers
to send delayed loads with next outbound trucks in a planning
horizon. Therefore, this paper proposes an inbound trucks schedul-
ing model considering a fixed departure time for outbound trucks
and temporary storage of loads in a cross dock facility. It is
assumed that delayed loads are stored until the next period (a time
slot in a day). Furthermore, Ladier and Alpan (2013) assume prede-
termined departure times for the outbound trucks. In other
researches, Lim, Miao, Rodrigues, and Xu (2005) considered a fixed
time window in truck door assignment problem for trucks loading
and unloading process. Based on the researches made, delayed
loads are classified in two different categories (lost loads and trans-
ferred loads). In the first category, it is assumed that the loads
arrived after the outbound trucks departure time are lost and
the cross dock scheduling minimizes the total lost loads (Miao,
Lim, & Ma, 2009). In the second category, the delayed loads are
stored in temporary storage until the next outbound truck depar-
ture time with the same destination (Boysen, Briskorn, &
Tschke, 2013; Van Belle et al., 2012). The current paper assumes
that delayed loads are stored until the next period (a time slot in
a day). Moreover, it considers that inbound trucks shipment may
include multiple products. Thus, we consider multiple periods in
a day and inbound truck scheduling is prepared for multi-period,
multi-product problem (Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh, Fatemi Ghomi,
& Sheikh Sajadieh, 2014).
In pre-distribution cross docking, suppliers bag and tag the
loads before transferring to the cross dock centers. When the pro-
duct holding cost increases, post-distribution cross docking is pre-
ferred. So, in this paper, we assume that it would be acceptable for
the cross dock managers allocate product to the customers them-
selves based on cross dock holding costs. According to the fixed
trucks outbound departure times, trucks must leave the cross dock
outbound doors without the delayed loads. It would be applicable
to replace other trucks product with the delayed loads. Therefore,
after receiving the delayed loads to the outbound door, they are
replaced with the transferred load before the outbound truck
51
departure time. This substitution characteristic will reduce inven-
tory holding cost significantly (Shah & Avittathur, 2007; Smith &
Agrawal, 2000; Tan & Karabati, 2013).
This paper proposes a cross dock inbound truck scheduling
model to minimize the total inventory holding costs based on
the post-distribution concept. Furthermore, it is assumed that out-
bound trucks leave the outbound doors in a predetermined time
and the delayed loads are stored in temporary storages until the
next outbound truck departure time with the same destination.
As an operational technique, delayed products substitution is con-
sidered in this paper. This paper uses products substitution con-
cept in cross dock terminals to propose a Mixed Integer Linear
Programming (MILP) model that minimizes the total delayed loads
holding costs in a planning horizon (often in a day). Furthermore, a
heuristic algorithm is developed to solve the model in the best
solution and right time. Furthermore, we compared the effect of
products substitution on the models objective value in many test
problems.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the model
assumptions and notations and development of the model.
Section 3 examines the problem complexity and develops a heuris-
tic algorithm to solve the model. Section 4 is the conclusions and
future research suggestions.
2. Problem statement
Cross docking terminals are distribution centers that reduce
inventory levels and decrease the shipments delivery time signifi-
cantly. In a cross dock center, inbound trucks unload their ship-
ments in inbound doors and the loads are moved to the
outbound doors for consolidation and sending to the customer.
As shown in Fig. 1, the inbound trucks unload their shipment in
the receiving area. The loads are transferred to the temporary stor-
age for consolidation or storing to the next outbound trucks depar-
ture times.
In this paper, we assume that outbound trucks leave the cross
dock outbound doors in a fixed predetermined due date. Thus,
the delayed loads must be stored in temporary storages until the
next outbound departure time for the same destination. In our
model, each inbound truck delivers multi batch of products based
on predefined customer demand. Moreover, each outbound door is
assigned to a specific customer. Therefore, the unloaded products
are transferred to predetermined outbound doors. We assume that
the number of inbound trucks is more than the number of inbound
doors and trucks unload their shipments in a sequence of time. In
this paper, we schedule the inbound trucks unloading time to min-
imize the total inventory holding costs in a cross dock system.
Moreover, to reduce the total inventories transferred to the next
period (next outbound truck departure time), the other destination
products are replaced with the delayed loads as much as possible.
To simplify the model some assumptions are considered as fol-
lows: (1) all inbound trucks are available at the beginning of
scheduling horizon; (2) the inbound truck loads information cor-
responding to the type and the quantity of products are available
before the scheduling; (3) the unloading and transshipment times
for all product types are similar; (4) there are no limitations on the
storage space as well as the material handling resources; and (5)
splitting of the truck loads is not allowed and the all inbound truck
loads are unloaded simultaneously. The model proposed in this
paper extends the Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh et al. (submitted for
publication) model to a products substitution model. The model
is formulated as an MILP problem.
Following gives notations used in the model before its
development.
52 S. Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 92 (2016) 5056

Fig. 1. The cross docking distribution center.

2.1. Notations S.t:

XX
xktij 1 8j 2 I; t2T 1
Indices k2K i2I[f0g
ij
I Set of inbound trucks; i = 1, 2, . . . , l
O Set of outbound trucks
X
xkt0i 6 1 8k 2 K; t2T 2
K Set of inbound doors i2I
N Set of product types
X X
T Set of time periods xktij xktji 8j 2 I; k 2 K; t 2 T 3
i2I[f0g i2I[fl1g
Parameters ij ij

Pti Unloading process time of inbound truck i in period t

 
dto Departure time of outbound truck o in period t C ti P C tj Pti  M: 1  xktji 8i 2 I; j 2 I [ f0g; t 2 T; k 2 K
tk Transshipment time between inbound door k and
storage area 4
Ltion Number of product type n, delivered by inbound truck !
i dedicated to outbound truck o in period t X X
ytio  M > C ti  dto tk  xktji 8i 2 I; o 2 O; t 2 T
M Large number
k2K j2I[f0g
htn Holding cost rate of product n in period t (per amount
per period) 5
Capto Capacity of outbound truck o in period t X XX
Stn Q ton St1n Ltion 8t 2 T; n2N 6
Decision variables o2O i2I o2O
Cti Continuous variable; unloading time of inbound truck X X
i in period t Q ton 6 St1n 1  ytio  Ltio0 n 8t 2 T; o 2 O; n 2 N
Qton Continuous variable; quantity of product n loaded in i2I o0 2O
the outbound truck o in period t 7
Stn Continuous variable; the quantity of product n in
X XX
period t stored until the next period Q ton Ltion 8o 2 O; n2N 8
xktij Binary variable; 1 if inbound truck i is processed t2T t2T i2I
before truck j in inbound door k in period t; 0
X
otherwise Q ton 6 Capto 8t 2 T; o2O 9
xkt0i Binary variable; 1 if inbound truck i is the first truck n2N
processed in inbound door k in period t; 0 otherwise X
xktil1 Binary variable; 1 if inbound truck i is the last truck C t0 0 10
processed in inbound door k in period t; 0 otherwise t2T

ytio Binary variable; 1 if shipments of inbound truck i are

too late to reach outbound truck o in period t; 0 xktij 2 f0; 1g 8i; j 2 I; t 2 T; k 2 K 11
otherwise
xkt0j 2 f0; 1g 8j 2 I; t 2 T; k 2 K 12

The proposed mathematical model is presented in the next section. xktil1 2 f0; 1g 8i 2 I; t 2 T; k 2 K 13

2.2. Model ytio 2 f0; 1g 8i 2 I; o 2 O; t 2 T 14

In this section, a MILP model is presented and the model sched- Q ton P 0 8t 2 T; o 2 O; n 2 N 15
ules inbound trucks dispatching time based on minimizing the
products holding costs. The proposed model uses product substitu- Ston P 0 8t 2 T; o 2 O; n 2 N 16
tion concept to decrease products holding costs in a cross dock
center. C ti P 0 8t 2 T; 8i 2 I 17
XX This model is formulated as a MILP problem that schedules the
Min Z htn  Stn inbound trucks unloading time to minimize total inventory holding
t2T n2N
costs. Set of constraints (1) guarantees that each inbound truck is
 S. Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 92 (2016) 5056
assigned to inbound doors once per each period. Sets of constraints
(2) and (3) define the sequence of inbound trucks and express that
no more than one queue of trucks is scheduled in each inbound
door. Set of constraints (4) determines the unloading time of
inbound truck i in period t. Set of constraints (5) determines the
status of products (without delay loads or delayed loads). Set of
constraints (6) balances the input and output of products in each
period. Set of constraints (7) expresses that the quantity of out-
bound truck loads must be less than the sum of previous delayed
loads, without delay loads in current period, and substituted loads
from other destinations. Set of constraints (8) shows inventory bal-
ancing in scheduling horizon. Set of constraint (9) considers the
outbound truck capacity constraint to transfer the loads.
Constraint (10) expresses that the starting time of truck 0 must
be zero.
In this model, after unloading process in the inbound doors,
loads are transferred to the temporary storages. In order to the
patching process in outbound doors, loads are transferred from
temporary storage to the related outbound door. Sometimes,
according to inbound truck scheduling, the loads are prepared to
send to the outbound doors after the trucks departure time. Thus,
delayed loads must be sent at the next period. In this paper, to
reduce the inventory holding costs, it is assumed the other out-
bound trucks products existing in temporary storage are substi-
tuted with delayed loads. These loads interchanges decrease the
inventory levels in a cross dock system significantly. Fig. 2 shows
loads substitution in a cross dock system.
3. Solution algorithm
3.1. Computational complexity
As shown before, the mathematical model proposed in this
paper is formulated as an MILP problem. It proposes an NP-hard
problem that is proved as follows:
Fig. 2. Cross dock system with substitution condition.
53
Theorem. The proposed model is NP-hard in strong sense.
Proof. This model is an extension of Boysen et al. (2013) to multi-
period, multi- product, and substitution condition problem. As it is
presented in Boysen et al.s (2013) paper, truck scheduling problem
with fixed outbound departures (TSFD) is strongly NP-hard. So, the
model proposed in this paper is NP-hard as well. Furthermore,
there are several papers that express non-preemptive cross dock-
ing scheduling problems are NP-hard (Chen & Lee, 2009;
Mosheiov, 1998; Van Belle et al., 2012).
3.2. Heuristic algorithm
The cross dock scheduling horizon is less than 24 h and the
computation running time plays an important role in the man-
agers decisions. In this paper, a heuristic algorithm is developed
to solve the model in a reasonable running time. To solve the
model, an expression based on sorting the inbound trucks is devel-
oped. In this expression, important parameters affecting the mod-
els objective function are evaluated and a sorting value is allotted
to each inbound truck. The decision expression developed in this
paper is given by (18).
XP htn  Ltion 
St; i n
18
o2O
dto
where S(t, i) is defined as the scoring value of inbound truck i in per-
iod t. htn is the inventory holding cost of product n in period t and dto
is the departure time of outbound truck o in period t. In this expres-
sion Ltion is defined as the number of product n transferred from
inbound truck i to outbound truck o in period t. This expression
shows the importance of inbound truck loads and inbound trucks
are sorted based on the increase in the expression value. Further-
more, a truck with larger score should be assigned in early schedule.
The heuristic algorithm is presented as follows:
54 S. Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 92 (2016) 5056
Fig. 3. Assignment of inbound trucks to the inbound doors according to the
heuristic algorithm.
Step 0: Determine input parameters and set t = 1;
Step 1: Calculate the S(t, i) expression for each inbound truck i in
period t.
Step 2: Sort the inbound trucks as follows:
In period t:
8i; j 2 I if St; i > St; j then inbound truck i is unloaded before
inbound truck j.
Step 3: Assign the first truck in the sorted list to first inbound
door and the second one to the second door and it goes on to
the last inbound door. After that, the next inbound door is
scheduled to unload after the first truck in the first inbound
Fig. 4. Effect of product substitution on the cross dock inventory holding costs.
door and this approach is continued to the last inbound truck.
Fig. 3 shows the assignment of inbound trucks to the inbound
doors according to the proposed approach.
Step 4: If t = T the algorithm is finished; otherwise assign t = t
+ 1 and go to the Step 2.
3.3. Results
This paper proposed a cross dock scheduling model based on
the products substitution. The model minimizes the total inven-
tory holding costs and it is assumed that outbound trucks leave
the outbound doors in predetermined departure times. In addition,
to decrease the computation running time, a heuristic algorithm
was proposed. In this subsection, several experimental test prob-
lems have been implemented and the results show good fitness
of the heuristic algorithm. Moreover, to show the importance of
the product substitution, the objective value of model with the
substitution condition was compared with unallowable product
substitution model. Thus, we implement two series of test prob-
lems. In the first series, models with and without substitution con-
dition were compared together and in the second series, the
heuristic algorithm results are obtained and compared with those
of optimum solution.
3.3.1. Test problems 1
In this series of test problems, we examine the effect of the sub-
stitution condition on the objective function. Fig. 4 compares the
solution of the product substitution model with the solution of
without product substitution model. To find model optimum solu-
tion, the mathematical model was programmed in Visual Studio
2010 software using C# language and Cplex 10 library. The prob-
lem sizes were considered as follows:
N = 3, T = 2, and K = 3. The number of outbound doors and the
number of inbound trucks change 14 and 545, respectively.
Fig. 4 shows the effect of product substitution on the model
optimal solution. The product substitution reduces inventory
levels and increases outbound trucks transshipment loads level
as well. In this experiment, we changed the number of inbound
trucks and the number of outbound doors and in each experiment,
the model solution with product substitution and without product
substitution was compared. As shown in Fig. 4, the model objective
value was reduced until 27% in these test problems.
 S. Rahmanzadeh Tootkaleh et al. / Computers & Industrial Engineering 92 (2016) 5056 55

3.3.2. Test problems 2 4. Conclusions and future works

According to cross dock scheduling horizon (often a day), prob-
lems computation running time is very important in decision- This paper proposed an MILP problem to schedule cross dock
making process. As it was shown before, the model presented in inbound trucks with respect to cross dock inventory holding costs.
this paper is an NP-hard problem and to find a near optimum In some industries, outbound trucks leave cross dock outbound
solution in a reasonable running time, a heuristic algorithm was doors in predetermined departure times. Based on this condition,
presented. In Table 1, we compared the heuristic algorithm with we considered a multi-period, multi-product scheduling model to
the models optimum solution. We evaluated the heuristic algo- reduce inventory holding costs in a cross dock system. Moreover,
rithm for 175 test problems with 35 different input parameters. according to the difficulties in implementing of pre-distribution
For each set of input parameters, 5 test problems were run and cross docking concept, it would be acceptable for the cross dock
the error average values are presented in Table 1. managers allocate product to the customers themselves based on
As shown in Table 1, the proposed heuristic algorithm was com- cross dock holding costs. So, the model benefits products substitu-
pared with the model programming with C# language in 35 test tion as an experimental technique. Indeed, it is assumed the other
problems. Models programming with C# obtains optimal solution destination loads can be replaced with the delayed loads. This paper
using Cplex 10 library. The results indicate computing running found the best sequence of inbound trucks unloading scheme to
time increases significantly as the number of inbound trucks (I), minimize the total inventory holding costs based on the product
outbound doors (O), and time periods (T) increases. Computing substitution concept. To solve the model in a reasonable computa-
running time does not necessarily depend on the number of tion running time, a heuristic algorithm was proposed and the
inbound doors and product types, but depends on the other input results showed the good fitness of its values to the optimum solu-
parameters (Capto, dto, tk). The results indicate that computation tions. Furthermore, to show the importance of product substitution
running time of the proposed heuristic algorithm reduces signifi- in a cross dock system, some experiments were made and results
cantly while the solution is near to the optimum value (maximum indicated a significant decrease in inventory holding costs compar-
error average and the worst case error are 6.47% and 10.38% ing to the without product substitution systems. The results showed
respectively). using products substitution concept was reduced cross dock holding
costs until 27% in the proposed test problems.
In future works, stochastic conditions can be added to the mod-
els parameters. Inbound trucks receiving time, unloading and
Table 1 transshipment times will be evaluated in stochastic conditions.
Comparing the proposed heuristic algorithm with the model programming with C#
Moreover, the model can utilize same trucks as inbound and out-
language.
bound trucks and schedule loading and unloading process times
Test Input parameters Computation Solution Worst as decision criteria.
number running time (s) error case
average (%) (%)
I K O N T Cplex Heuristic
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