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A Resource Management Problem under Different Assignment Rules in Cross Docks

Lijuan Zhang 1, Benoît Trouillet 2, and Frédéric Semet 2
1. DGUT-CNAM Institute, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan, China
2. Ecole Centrale de Lille, Lille, France

Abstract—In this paper, we address a resource management problem under the time window constraints in cross docks. The resources specify the operators working in cross dock terminal. The times as well as the resources required by each operation (unloading, sorting and loading) are considered. The objective aims to minimize the total resource number in cross dock in order to minimize the total cost, which includes labor cost and undelivered good penalty cost. We consider two different resource assignment rules: non-shared resource rules and shared resource rules. Two methods are proposed to deal with this problem: the mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation and the simulation using Petri net. First, the problem is formulated as a MIP model in which the resources at each work station are not shared. Then to evaluate the MIP model, the operations in cross dock are simulated using Petri net. Last, according the simulation results, a second MIP model with shared resources is proposed. The computational results show that the second MIP model outperforms the first one for organizing and distributing resources in cross dock. 

Index Terms—cross docks; resource management; MIP formulation; time windows; Petri net

Cite: Lijuan Zhang, Benoît Trouillet, and Frédéric Semet, "A Resource Management Problem under Different Assignment Rules in Cross Docks" International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 596-602, April 2020. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.9.4.596-602

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.