A tabu search approach to the truck scheduling problem with multiple docks and time windows

While organizing the cross-docking operations, cross-dock managers are confronted with many decision problems. One of these problems is the truck scheduling problem. This article presents a truck scheduling problem that is concerned with both inbound and outbound trucks at multiple dock doors. The objective is to minimize the total travel time and the total tardiness. The truck scheduling problem under study is described in detail and a mathematical model of the problem is provided which can be solved to optimality with a mixed integer programming solver, at the expense of a high computation time. Next, a tabu search approach is presented. Experimental results on new benchmark instances indicate that the proposed tabu search is able to find good quality results in a short time period, thus offering potential for integration in cross-docking decision support systems.