Cross-docking is a logistics strategy in which freight is unloaded from inbound vehicles and (almost) directly loaded into outbound vehicles, with little or no storage in between. This article presents an overview of the cross-docking concept. Guidelines for the successful use and implementation of cross-docking are discussed and several characteristics are described that can be used to distinguish between different cross-dock types. In addition, this article presents an extensive review of the existing literature about cross-docking. The discussed articles are classified based on the problem type that is tackled (ranging from more strategical or tactical to more operational problems). Based on this review, several opportunities to improve and extend the current research are indicated.

While organizing the cross-docking operations, cross-dock managers are confronted with many decision problems. One of these problems is the truck scheduling problem. This article presents a truck scheduling problem that is concerned with both inbound and outbound trucks at multiple dock doors. The objective is to minimize the total travel time and the total tardiness. The truck scheduling problem under study is described in detail and a mathematical model of the problem is provided which can be solved to optimality with a mixed integer programming solver, at the expense of a high computation time. Next, a tabu search approach is presented. Experimental results on new benchmark instances indicate that the proposed tabu search is able to find good quality results in a short time period, thus offering potential for integration in cross-docking decision support systems.

This paper presents a systematic description of a reusable software architecture for multi-agent systems in the domain of manufacturing control. The architectural description consolidates the groups' expertise in this area.Until now, the research took a manufacturing control perspective at multi-agent systems. The research focussed on providing benefits to the manufacturing control domain by designing a novel type of control system.This paper takes a software architectural perspective at multi-agent manufacturing control. The systematic description specifies a software product line architecture for manufacturing control. The paper describes the assets of the software product line architecture and how the assets can be combined.

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This paper presents a holonic manufacturing execution system (MES) that cooperates with a planning system. This cooperation allows to combine the robustness and flexibility of the holonic MES with the optimisation performed by the planning system. The paper investigates the effect on the global performance of this cooperation for a specific manufacturing case in a series of experiments. It compares the effect of this cooperation when the planning is optimal with regard to the manufacturing case with situations where the planning system is not optimal. More precisely, it compares the performance of the HEMS in situations where the planning systems systematically misestimates the execution time of a workstation (e.g. a poorly maintained workstation or a partially operational workstation) to situations where this is not the case. The experiments are conducted under varying work loads. Also, the effort the Holonic MES puts in finding new solutions resembling the planning is varied. Finally, the paper reports the results of the experiments and draws conclusions.