A generic model for crossdock truck scheduling and truck-to-door assignment problems

Crossdocking is a just-in-time (JIT) practice in logistics of unloading materials from an incoming trailer and loading them into outgoing trailers, with little or no storage in between. The efficient operation of a crossdocking system requires an appropriate coordination of inbound and outbound flows, accurate planning and dynamic scheduling. Unfortunately, optimizing solutions to the problems associated with crossdock operational management and planning is quite difficult and in some cases even impossible. Besides, there is currently a shortage of planning policies for different crossdocking operations. In this paper, we develop a generic mathematical model to address the two problems of truck scheduling and truck-to-door assignment through employing a mixed integer programming approach (MIP). We believe our proposed model is generic enough to embrace various types of crossdocking operations which have been exercised in today’s industrial world, more specifically fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry.