Cross-Docking
Multiple-product & Various Truck Capacities Cross-docking Problem
Introduction
Customer demands are getting more complicated and even harder to be satisfied nowadays. It is highly needed for the company to have such flexibility, agility and reliability in terms of answering the demand requests from their customers. But their limitations in improving customer satisfaction might be a big problem for them and the operation of single company can have a bad impact on those of the other companies in the supply chain, meaning that if one company fails to fulfill the demands required, it will affect the related companies and obviously will put them in jeopardy in terms of customers trust and the cost they would have to spend. Therefore, improving supply chain management is really attractive for those companies looking to efficiently improve their customer satisfaction.
Apte and Viswanathan (2000) stated that distribution process is responsible for 30% of an item price and this is the reason why there are a lot of companies trying their very best to develop new distribution strategies in order to manage their product flow in efficient manner. Cross docking is definitely one of those strategies people believe to be an efficient strategy to minimize inventory and to reduce cycle times. Apte and Viswanathan (2000) also defined cross docking as the continuous process to the final destination through the cross-dock storing products and materials in the distribution center. When cross-docking is implemented in the supply chain, products in multiple locations are collected in the cross-dock before eventually transporting them to their final destination. After consolidation according to product destination in the cross-dock is performed, products are then moved from the cross-dock to their respective destinations.
There are a lot of studies discussing about cross docking nowadays and commonly they are divided into two general categories. The first category is about
Introduction
Customer demands are getting more complicated and even harder to be satisfied nowadays. It is highly needed for the company to have such flexibility, agility and reliability in terms of answering the demand requests from their customers. But their limitations in improving customer satisfaction might be a big problem for them and the operation of single company can have a bad impact on those of the other companies in the supply chain, meaning that if one company fails to fulfill the demands required, it will affect the related companies and obviously will put them in jeopardy in terms of customers trust and the cost they would have to spend. Therefore, improving supply chain management is really attractive for those companies looking to efficiently improve their customer satisfaction.
Apte and Viswanathan (2000) stated that distribution process is responsible for 30% of an item price and this is the reason why there are a lot of companies trying their very best to develop new distribution strategies in order to manage their product flow in efficient manner. Cross docking is definitely one of those strategies people believe to be an efficient strategy to minimize inventory and to reduce cycle times. Apte and Viswanathan (2000) also defined cross docking as the continuous process to the final destination through the cross-dock storing products and materials in the distribution center. When cross-docking is implemented in the supply chain, products in multiple locations are collected in the cross-dock before eventually transporting them to their final destination. After consolidation according to product destination in the cross-dock is performed, products are then moved from the cross-dock to their respective destinations.
There are a lot of studies discussing about cross docking nowadays and commonly they are divided into two general categories. The first category is about