Simulation and process mining in a cross-docking system: a case study

Abstract

The increasing development of the competitive market has forced organisations to make great efforts in the processes of supply, production, and distribution to meet customer demand in the shortest time and at the lowest cost. A cross-docking (CD) system is one of the successful and practical strategies in this field considered by researchers in various fields. Also, business process management plays a key role in continuous improvement and increased productivity. In today’s digital age, due to the ability to record all activities, process mining is an important method to identify the current situation and improve productivity. In this research, a newly established CD belonging to a chain store is studied to improve the current situation, in which different goods enter and then exit after different processes. The purpose of this study is to obtain the optimal number of doors and loaders as sources. First, helping an RFID system, all activities are recorded, and the current situation of the processes is monitored, and then, the real process model is identified using heuristic and inductive miner algorithms. After adapting to the event log by using the simulation process in Arena software, different scenarios are examined, and the best possible case is presented.