Scheduling cross-docking operations under uncertainty: A stochastic genetic algorithm based on scenarios tree

A cross-docking terminal enables consolidating and sorting fast-moving products along supply chain networks and reduces warehousing costs and transportation efforts. The target efficiency of such logistic systems results from synchronizing the physical and information flows while scheduling receiving, shipping and handling operations. Within the tight time-windows imposed by fast-moving products (e.g., perishables), a deterministic schedule hardly adheres to real-world environments because of the uncertainty in trucks arrivals. In this paper, a stochastic MILP model formulates the minimization of penalty costs from exceeding the time-windows under uncertain truck arrivals. Penalty costs are affected by products' perishability or the expected customer’ service level. A validating numerical example shows how to solve (1) dock-assignment, (2) while prioritizing the unloading tasks, and (3) loaded trucks departures with a small instance. A tailored stochastic genetic algorithm able to explore the uncertain scenarios tree and optimize cross-docking operations is then introduced to solve scaled up instaces. The proposed genetic algorithm is tested on a real-world problem provided by a national delivery service network managing the truck-to-door assignment, the loading, unloading, and door-to-door handling operations of a fleet of 271 trucks within two working shifts. The obtained solution improves the deterministic schedule reducing the penalty costs of 60%. Such results underline the impact of unpredicted trucks’ delay and enable assessing the savings from increasing the number of doors at the cross-dock

Cross-docking with vehicle routing problem. A state of art review 1

Este artículo presenta una revisión al estado del arte durante los últimos diez años, de la literatura relacionada con las plataformas de intercambio logísticas, denominadas Cross-Docking. Este tipo de sistemas surgen como alternativa para reducir el costo logístico y el tiempo de respuesta al cliente. El objetivo consiste en simplificar algunos procesos tales como almacenamiento y manejo de materiales, a partir de la reducción de períodos de bodegaje y realización de surtida de materiales en los muelles de ingreso y salida de mercancía. En la primera parte, se desarrolla el concepto, su funcionamiento operativo y clasificación. En la segunda parte, se realiza un reporte de los trabajos más relevantes acerca de esta técnica. Posteriormente, se profundiza en este tema y el ruteo de vehículos simultáneos, haciendo énfasis en los métodos de solución, puesto que se trata de un problema de optimización combinatoria, clasificado como de alta complejidad computacional. Al final, se presentan conclusiones y la discusión.This article reviews the state of the art for the last ten years about the literature related to Cross-Docking. The Cross-Docking systems emerge as an alternative to reduce logistics costs and customer response time in some processes such as warehousing and material handling, times by reducing storage and picking, on the docks of inbound and outbound of vehicles. In the first part, the concept of Cross-Docking is developed, also its operating performance and classification. In the second part, a report on the most relevant works is done. Subsequently, it delves into the issue of vehicle routing and Cross-Docking with emphasis on methods of solution, since it is a combinatorial optimization problem classified as NP-hard. The document ends with the conclusions and discussion

A Cross-Docking Approach for Farfetch Global Delivery

Farfetch is an e-commerce platform with a exponential growth in the last years, but this company has a particular type of business. Farfetch does not hold stock, everything that its sold on farftech.com comes from partners, that are boutiques spread all over the world, that sell high-end fashion articles, that do not have an online presence and relay on Farfetch to have a global reach. When a client buys on ff.com, if more than one item is purchased, they can come from different boutiques placed in different points, for instance, one can belong to a Portuguese partner, and the other can be shipped from an Italian boutique. When this happens, the client will receive two different boxes, arriving at different times, with different tracking information, and this has a huge impact on the client satisfaction and the need to improve the client satisfaction originate the theme for this dissertation. The main objective of this thesis is building a cross-docking strategy to gain knowledge about this strategy, that is something new in the company, identifying the variables with the most impact in cross-docking, and what are Farfetch's limitations on implementing this type of logistics strategy. The project will study this approach to two different markets, one for the Chinese Market, and the second will be a Transatlantic Bridge between Europe and the United States of America. To develop this strategy the software used is AnyLogic, a simulation tool based on agents and discrete-time events, that allow simulating not only the operations inside the cross-dock but also control every agent involved in the process, for example, the operators

Esnek atölye tipi hücre çizelgeleme problemleri için çok amaçlı matematiksel model ve genetik algoritma ile çözüm önerisi

06.03.2018 tarihli ve 30352 sayılı Resmi Gazetede yayımlanan “Yükseköğretim Kanunu İle Bazı Kanun Ve Kanun Hükmünde Kararnamelerde Değişiklik Yapılması Hakkında Kanun” ile 18.06.2018 tarihli “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” gereğince tam metin erişime açılmıştır.Günümüz rekabetçi iş ortamında, müşteriler daha düşük maliyetle daha yüksek kalitede çeşitli ürünleri satın almak istemektedir. İmalat firmaları, talep çeşitliliğini karşılamak için yüksek derecede ürün çeşitliliğine ve küçük imalat parti büyüklüğüne ihtiyaç duymaktadır. Üretimdeki ürün çeşitlilikleri uzun hazırlık ve taşıma süreleri, karmaşık çizelgeleme problemleri gibi birçok probleme neden olmaktadır. Geleneksel imalat sistemleri, bu tip değişikliklere cevap vermede yeterince esnek değilken Hücresel Üretim Sistemleri üreticilerin bu ihtiyaçlarına cevap verebilecek özelliklere sahiptir. Ayrıca gerçek hayat problemlerinin çoğunda, bir parçanın bazı ya da bütün operasyonları birden fazla makinede işlem görebilmekte ve bazen de bu operasyonlar bir makineyi ya da iş merkezini birden fazla kez ziyaret etmektedir. Bu seçenek sisteme esneklik kazandırırken bu kadar karmaşık bir üretim sisteminin başarılı ve doğru bir şekilde işletilebilmesi kaynakların etkin kullanılmasını da gerektirmektedir. Bu çalışma, istisnai parçaları, hücrelerarası hareketleri, hücrelerarası taşıma sürelerini, sıra bağımlı parça ailesi hazırlık sürelerini ve yeniden işlem gören parçaları dikkate alarak hücresel imalat ortamında esnek atölye tipi çizelgeleme probleminin çözümüne dair bir matematiksel model ve çözüm yöntemi sunmaktadır. Mevcut bilgilerimiz ışığında yapılan bu çalışma Esnek Atölye Tipi Hücre Çizelgeleme Probleminde (EATHÇP) çok amaçlı matematiksel model ve meta-sezgiselinin kullanımı için ilk girişimdir. Bununla birlikte gerçek hayat uygulamaları için EATHÇP süreci, birçok çelişen amacı dikkate almayı gerektirdiği için ele alınan skalerleştirme metodu pratik uygulama ve teorik araştırma açısından oldukça önemlidir. Önerilen karma tamsayılı doğrusal olmayan matematiksel modelle küçük ve orta boyutlu problemler çözülebilmektedir. Büyük boyutlu problemlerin çözümü, doğrusal olmayan modellerle makul zamanlarda olamayacağı ya da çok uzun süreceği için konik skalerleştirmeli çok amaçlı matematiksel modeli kullanan bir Genetik Algoritma (GA) meta-sezgisel çözüm yöntemi önerilmiştir. GA yaklaşımının en iyi veya en iyiye yakın çözüme ulaşmasına etki eden parametrelerin en iyi kombinasyonu belirlemek amacı ile bir deney tasarımı gerçekleştirilmiştir. Bu tez çalışması için Eskişehir Tülomsaş Motor Fabrikası'nda bir uygulama çalışması yürütülmüştür. Yürütülen bu çalışma, altı farklı amaç ağırlık değerleri kullanılarak hem konik skalerleştirmeli GA yaklaşımı ile hem de ağırlıklı toplam skalerleştirmeli GA yaklaşımı ile çözülmüştür. Amaç ağırlıklarının beşinde çok amaçlı konik skalerleştirme GA yaklaşımının daha baskın sonuçlara ulaşabildiği vurgulanmıştır. Ayrıca, önerilen çok amaçlı modelin gerçek hayat problemleri için de makul zamanda uygun çözümler üretebildiği gösterilmiştir.In today's highly competitive business environment, customers desire to buy various products with higher quality at lower costs. Manufacturing firms require a high degree of product variety and small manufacturing lot sizes to meet the demand variability. The product variations in manufacturing cause many problems such as lengthy setup and transportation times, complex scheduling. Cellular Manufacturing Systems contain the characteristics, which will respond to the needs of manufacturers, even though Conventional Manufacturing Systems are not flexible enough to respond to changes. In addition, in most real life manufacturing problems, some or all operations of a part can be processed on more than one machine, and sometimes operations may visit a machine or work center more than once. It is necessary to use resources effectively in order to run such a complex production system successfully. In this study, a mathematical model and a solution approach that deals with a flexible job shop scheduling problem in cellular manufacturing environment is proposed by taking into consideration exceptional parts, intercellular moves, intercellular transportation times, sequence-dependent family setup times, and recirculation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use multi-objective mathematical model and meta-heuristic approach for a Flexible Job Shop Cell Scheduling Problem (FJCSP). However, in the real-life applications, the scalarization method considered is highly important in terms of theoretical research and practical application because the FJCSP process is not easy because of many conflicting objectives. The proposed mixed integer non-linear model can be used for solving small and middle scaled problems. Solution of large scaled problems is not possible in reasonable time or takes too long time, so a Genetic Algorithm (GA) meta-heuristic approach that uses a multi-objective mathematical model with conic scalarization has been presented. An experimental design was used to determine the best combination of parameters which are affected performance of genetic algorithm to achieve optimum or sub-optimum solution. In this thesis study, a case study was conducted in Tülomsaş Locomotive and Engine Factory in Eskişehir. This study was solved by using both conic scalarization GA approach and weighted sum scalarization GA approach with six different weights of objective. It is emphasized that the multi-objective conic scalarization GA approach has better quality than other approach for five different weights of objective. In addition, it has been shown that the multi-objective model could also obtain optimum results in reasonable time for the real-world problems

Cross-Docking: A Proven LTL Technique to Help Suppliers Minimize Products\u27 Unit Costs Delivered to the Final Customers

This study aims at proposing a decision-support tool to reduce the total supply chain costs (TSCC) consisting of two separate and independent objective functions including total transportation costs (TTC) and total cross-docking operating cost (TCDC). The full-truckload (FT) transportation mode is assumed to handle supplier→customer product transportation; otherwise, a cross-docking terminal as an intermediate transshipment node is hired to handle the less-than-truckload (LTL) product transportation between the suppliers and customers. TTC model helps minimize the total transportation costs by maximization of the number of FT transportation and reduction of the total number of LTL. TCDC model tries to minimize total operating costs within a cross-docking terminal. Both sub-objective functions are formulated as binary mathematical programming models. The first objective function is a binary-linear programming model, and the second one is a binary-quadratic assignment problem (QAP) model. QAP is an NP-hard problem, and therefore, besides a complement enumeration method using ILOG CPLEX software, the Tabu search (TS) algorithm with four diversification methods is employed to solve larger size problems. The efficiency of the model is examined from two perspectives by comparing the output of two scenarios including; i.e., 1) when cross-docking is included in the supply chain and 2) when it is excluded. The first perspective is to compare the two scenarios’ outcomes from the total supply chain costs standpoint, and the second perspective is the comparison of the scenarios’ outcomes from the total supply chain costs standpoint. By addressing a numerical example, the results confirm that the present of cross-docking within a supply chain can significantly reduce total supply chain costs and total transportation costs