Abstract Cross-docking is a logistics procedure aiming at minimizing the storage and picking operations of a warehouse. It consists of unloading cargos from trucks and immediately load them into outbound trucks, with limited or no storage in between. An efficient transshipment operation is a critical factor in this strategy. Hence, we study the multi-dock truck sequencing problem in a cross-docking center with the objective of minimizing the makespan. We explore the parallel machine scenario instead of the traditional flow shop setting and propose a polynomial parallel machine based heuristic that outperforms time-indexed mathematical formulation and state-of-the-art heuristics for small, moderate, and large size instances. Our results suggest that the consideration of a parallel machine environment could bring a new light in modeling the truck sequence in a cross-docking facility, opening new research directions in the field.

中文翻译：

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多坞站货车排序问题的并行机调度方法

摘要 越库作业是一种旨在尽量减少仓库存储和拣货操作的物流程序。它包括从卡车上卸下货物并立即将它们装载到出境卡车中，中间有有限的存储空间或没有存储空间。高效的转运操作是该战略的关键因素。因此，我们研究了交叉配送中心的多码头卡车排序问题，目的是最小化完工时间。我们探索了并行机场景，而不是传统的流水车间设置，并提出了一种基于多项式并行机的启发式方法，该方法在小型、中等和大型实例方面优于时间索引数学公式和最先进的启发式方法。