A branch-and-price approach to evaluate the role of cross-docking operations in consolidated supply chains. (2nd September 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cóccola, Mariana; Méndez, Carlos A.; Dondo, Rodolfo G.
• Is Part Of: Computers & chemical engineering. Volume 80(2015)
• Page Start: 15
• Page End: 29
• Publication Date: 2015-09-02
• Subjects: Supply chain -- Cross-docking -- Direct delivery -- Column generation -- Branch-and-price -- Decomposition; Chemical engineering -- Data processing -- Periodicals; 660.0285
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compchemeng.2015.04.039
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0098-1354

Abstract

Abstract: Supply-chain management and optimization aims at reducing costs and inventories. One way to increase the supply-chain efficiency is to use cross-docking for consolidating shipments from different suppliers. Cross-docking is a warehousing strategy used in logistics that consists on moving goods from suppliers to customers through a cross-dock facility. The employment of this strategy must be carefully evaluated because sometimes transportation requests can be better directly moved from source-sites to destination. A realistic problem studying the convenience of direct delivery, avoiding some cross-docking transfers, is here discussed. An efficient methodology for finding (near)optimal solutions is also described. The methodology is based on the use of column generation embedded into an incomplete branch-and-price tree. The approach provides (near)optimal solutions by solving the column generation sub-problems without necessarily considering all unexplored nodes in the search-tree. Finally, we show computational results on numerous test problems and on four configurations of the addressed case study.