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 paper 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 paper presents an extensive review of the existing literature about cross-docking. The discussed papers are classified based on the problem type that is tackled (ranging from more strategic or tactical to more operational problems). Based on this review, several opportunities to improve and extend the current research are indicated.

/pdf/cross-docking-state-of-the-art-bftl5ghpi9.pdf

Cross-docking: State of the art

Truck dock assignment problem with operational time constraint within crossdocks

This paper surveys a large variety of mathematical models and up-to-date solution techniques developed for solving a general flight gate scheduling problem that deals with assigning different aircraft activities (arrival, departure and intermediate parking) to distinct aircraft stands or gates. The aim of the work is both to present various models and solution techniques which are available in nowadays literature and to give a general idea about new open problems that arise in practise. We restrict the scope of the paper to flight gate management without touching scheduling of ground handling operations.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/147644/1/manuskript_584.pdf

Flight gate scheduling: State-of-the-art and recent developments

In this paper, we examine crane scheduling for ports. This important component of port operations management is studied when the non-crossing spatial constraint, which is common to crane operations, is considered. We assume that ships can be divided into holds and that cranes can move from hold to hold but jobs are not pre-emptive, so that only one crane can work on one hold or job to complete it. Our objective is to minimize the latest completion time for all jobs. We formulate this problem as an integer programming problem. We provide the proof that this problem is NP-complete and design a branch-and-bound algorithm to obtain optimal solutions. A simulated annealing meta-heuristic with effective neighbourhood search is designed to find good solutions in larger size instances. The elaborate experimental results show that the branch-and-bound algorithm runs much faster than CPLEX and the simulated annealing approach can obtain near optimal solutions for instances of various sizes.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fpalgrave.jors.2602110.pdf

Crane scheduling with non-crossing constraint

This paper addresses an airport gate assignment problem with multiple objectives. The objectives are to minimize the number of ungated flights and the total passenger walking distances or connection times as well as to maximize the total gate assignment preferences. The problem examined is an integer program with multiple objectives (one of them being quadratic) and quadratic constraints. Of course, such a problem is inherently difficult to solve. We tackle the problem by Pareto simulated annealing in order to get a representative approximation for the Pareto front. Results of computational experiments are presented. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to consider the airport gate assignment problem with multiple objectives.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07408170701416673

Multicriteria airport gate assignment and Pareto simulated annealing

We consider the over-constrained Airport Gate Assignment Problem where the number of flights exceed the number of gates available, and where the objectives are to minimize the number of ungated flights and the total walking distances. The problem is formulated as a binary quadratic programming problem. We design a greedy algorithm and use a Tabu Search meta-heuristic to solve the problem. The greedy algorithm minimizes ungated flights while we devise a new neighbourhood search technique, the Interval Exchange Move, which allows us flexibility in seeking good solutions, especially when flight schedules are dense in time. Experiments conducted give good results.

New heuristics for over-constrained flight to gate assignments

This paper extends carrier assignment models used in winner determination auctions for transportation procurement to include shipper non-price objectives and carrier transit point costs. The models are unlike traditional carrier assignment models which incorporate only carrier lane bids, and different from combinatorial auction models which focus on packets of lanes without considering transit point costs. We develop solutions, including metaheuristics, for the new models and through computational experimentation show that the algorithms work well and can be easily implemented.

/pdf/carrier-assignment-models-in-transportation-procurement-ymng5e0a7k.pdf

Carrier assignment models in transportation procurement

In this paper we study the over-constrained Air port Gate Assignment Problem where the objectives are to minimize the number of ungated flights and the total walking distancesor connectiontimes. Weapproachthe problemby first usinga Simulated Annealing heuristic and then developinga hybrid which uses Simulated Annealing together with a Tabu Search. With this approach,experimental resultsobtained are found be good and exceedthosepreviously obtained.

Yejun Zhu

Papers

New heuristics for over-constrained flight to gate assignments

Carrier assignment models in transportation procurement

The Airport Gate Assignment Problem