Truck Scheduling in Distribution Systems with Multiple Cross Docks and No Intermediate Storage

Cross docking is a new strategy in supply chain management. In a cross docking system, items move directly from receiving dock to shipping dock, without being stored in the warehouse or distribution center. This paper studies the problem of truck scheduling in a distribution system including multiple cross docks with no intermediate storage. In this model of cross docking scenario preemption of trucks is allowed. Therefore, both inbound and outbound trucks can arrive and move out the distribution center intermittently. In this paper a mixed integer linear programming model has been developed. Moreover, to solve the problem we proposed three metaheuristics algorithm based on tabu search, simulated annealing and genetic algorithm. In this regard, we propose a novel solution encoding scheme for the problem. And the algorithms are tuned by Taguchi method. Using numerical experiments, the genetic algorithm outperforms the other two algorithms Besides.