Simulation Optimization of the Crossdock Door Assignment Problem

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to present the Crossdock Door Assignment Problem, which involves assigning destinations to outbound dock doors of Crossdock centres such that travel distance by material handling equipment is minimized. We propose a two fold solution; simulation and optimization of the simulation model -simulation optimization. The novel aspect of our solution approach is that we intend to use simulation to derive a more realistic objective function and use Memetic algorithms to find an optimal solution. The main advantage of using Memetic algorithms is that it combines a local search with Genetic Algorithms. The Crossdock Door Assignment Problem is a new domain application to Memetic Algorithms and it is yet unknown how it will perform.

Ideology, Decision Planning and Operational Scenarios and Features in Cross Docking Models

“…This planning commonly deals with the short-term planning horizon such as daily or weekly. Studies under cross docking operational planning can be divided into five major problem areas which are scheduling problem (Arabani et al, 2012;Boysen, 2010;Mentzer et al, 2011), dock door assignment problem (Aickelin and Adewunmi, 2008;Berghman et al, 2011), transhipment problem (Larbi et al, 2009;Miao et al, 2010), vehicle routing problem (Dondo et al, 2011) and product allocation problem such as in Li et al (2008). An overall cross docking planning and decision levels can be summarized as in Fig.…”

“…Many studies such as by (Shakeri et al, 2008;Arabani et al, 2011;Sadykov, 2012) put forward minimizing makespan as the objective of their optimization models. Besides makespan, the travel cost or specifically, the travel distance, also received attention in measuring the cross docking operation, see Aickelin and Adewunmi (2008). In cross docking studies by (Larbi et al, 2007;Bozer and Carlo, 2008;Li et al, 2009) for examples, the objective of the model is to minimize the total travel distance of transferring freight from the inbound door to the outbound door.…”

“…The mathematical programming models deals with maximization and/or minimization of certain objective function(s) whether in the form of single objective or multi-objectives (Goliasa et al, 2010;Larbi et al, 2011;McWilliams et al, 2005;Soltani and Sadjadi, 2010). Aside from that, simulation technique is also used to simulate the performance of the cross docking centre in a controlled environment in order to estimate what the actual performance will be Aickelin and Adewunmi (2008). In addition, heuristic and meta heuristics techniques have been proposed in order to solve the large scale instances problem of cross docking operation (Larbi et al, 2011;Shakeri et al, 2012;Wu et al, 2011).…”

A Review on Quantitative Approaches for Dock Door Assignment in Cross-Docking

“…Once a truck is assigned to an available inbound door, the goods are unloaded, sorted and moved onto the shipping door for delivery using the outbound truck. Due to the large amount of freight, dynamic nature of truck scheduling, flow of freight pattern in the cross dock center, the arrangement of inbound and outbound doors and the assignment of destinations to outbound door, cross dock door assignment has become a complex combinatorial optimization problem [13]. In fact, the performance of goods transshipment is influenced by the dock assignment.…”

“…They analyzed the drawback of existing formulation in ( [16], [17], [27]) and introduced a new approach for solving a small size problem of seven incoming trailers and a dock with 10 receiving doors and 10 shipping doors (overall 20 doors). Later on, with the belief that simulation can derive a more realistic objective function, Aickelin and Adewunmi [13] proposed two-fold solution called simulation optimization to study the cross dock assignment problem. The aim of their study was to develop a robust metaheuristic to find the optimal arrangement of inbound and outbound doors in the terminal and the most efficient assignment of destination to outbound doors such that the material handling cost can be reduced.…”