An optimization model for the outbound truck scheduling problem at cross-docking platforms

© 2017, Springer International Publishing AG. A cross-dock is a facility where arriving materials are sorted, grouped and delivered to destinations, with very limited storage times, with the overall objective of optimizing the total management costs. The operational efficiency of a cross-docking system strongly depends on how the logistic activities are organized. For this reason, optimization models and methods can be very useful to improve the system performances. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to describe the so-called truck scheduling problem at a cross-docking platform. The model considers most of the actual constraints occurring in real problems; therefore, it can be viewed as an interesting basis to define a decision support system for this kind of problems. Some preliminary results show that the model can be efficiently solved in limited computational times