Article ID: | iaor20021830 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 48 |
Issue: | 6 |
Start Page Number: | 833 |
End Page Number: | 845 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2000 |
Journal: | Operations Research |
Authors: | Bartholdi John J., Gue Kevin R. |
Keywords: | quality & reliability |
Handling freight in a crossdocking terminal is labor intensive and therefore costly because workers must unload, sort, and transfer a wide variety of freight from incoming to outgoing trailers. The efficiency of workers depends in large part on how trailers are assigned to doors around the dock; that is, on its layout. A good layout reduces travel distances without creating congestion, but until now no tools have been available to construct such layouts. We describe models of travel cost and three types of congestion typically experienced in crossdocking terminals, and we use them to construct layouts that minimize the labor cost of transferring freight. We report on the use of our models in the less-than-truckload trucking industry, including an implementation at a terminal in Stockton, California, that improved productivity by more than 11%.