This research proposes the utilization of a mixed service mode dock-door instead of an exclusive service mode dock-door inside a cross-dock facility. In the mixed service mode dock-door, a door (called a flexible door) can be assigned as an inbound door or as an outbound door depending on the situation. Inbound trucks from the supplier site need to be assigned to the inbound doors, while outbound trucks are dispatched from the outbound doors and deliver the products to customers. The objective of this problem is to decide which doors are selected to either the inbound or outbound doors, assign suppliers to inbound doors, and construct the vehicle routes to deliver products to customers, such that the total transportation and material handling (to move products from inbound to outbound door) costs are minimized.
We generate a problem set and develop a mathematical programming model to solve the problem. Because of the limitation of commercial software (CPLEX) in solving large problems, we propose a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm and test it on the same dataset. When solving the mixed service mode dock-door model and within the 2-hour running time limit for CPLEX (only for 25 and 50 customers), SA is able to find 28 of the same optimal solutions as CPLEX and enhances 27 solutions from a total of 58 problems. When solving the exclusive service mode dock-door model and within the 2-hour running time limit for CPLEX (only for 25 and 50 customers), SA is able to find 34 of the same solutions as CPLEX (30 of them are optimal) and enhances 23 solutions from a total of 58 problems. Finally, we compare the total costs between using an exclusive service mode dock-door and a mixed service mode dock-door, in which the former presents 8% cost savings versus the latter, especially in a large problem (50 customers, 20 dock-doors).

This research proposes the utilization of a mixed service mode dock-door instead of an exclusive service mode dock-door inside a cross-dock facility. In the mixed service mode dock-door, a door (called a flexible door) can be assigned as an inbound door or as an outbound door depending on the situation. Inbound trucks from the supplier site need to be assigned to the inbound doors, while outbound trucks are dispatched from the outbound doors and deliver the products to customers. The objective of this problem is to decide which doors are selected to either the inbound or outbound doors, assign suppliers to inbound doors, and construct the vehicle routes to deliver products to customers, such that the total transportation and material handling (to move products from inbound to outbound door) costs are minimized.
We generate a problem set and develop a mathematical programming model to solve the problem. Because of the limitation of commercial software (CPLEX) in solving large problems, we propose a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm and test it on the same dataset. When solving the mixed service mode dock-door model and within the 2-hour running time limit for CPLEX (only for 25 and 50 customers), SA is able to find 28 of the same optimal solutions as CPLEX and enhances 27 solutions from a total of 58 problems. When solving the exclusive service mode dock-door model and within the 2-hour running time limit for CPLEX (only for 25 and 50 customers), SA is able to find 34 of the same solutions as CPLEX (30 of them are optimal) and enhances 23 solutions from a total of 58 problems. Finally, we compare the total costs between using an exclusive service mode dock-door and a mixed service mode dock-door, in which the former presents 8% cost savings versus the latter, especially in a large problem (50 customers, 20 dock-doors).

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