Dock sharing in cross-docking facilities of the postal service industry

Abstract

In cross-docks, incoming shipments are unloaded, moved across the facility, and loaded into outbound trucks, such that truck load factors are increased and transportation costs are reduced. In this context, we treat the question which outbound destinations should share a dock if not enough docking space is available to process each destination via its separate dock door. We aim at a partition of destinations (among docks), such that fixed processing intervals do not overlap and the maximum inventory accumulating in the staging areas is minimized. We define the resulting dock sharing problem specifically addressing the peculiarities of the postal service industry, investigate computational complexity, and provide solution procedures.