Vehicle Routing Problem for Fashion Supply Chains with Cross-Docking

Zhi-Hua Hu, Yingxue Zhao and Tsan-Ming Choi

Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2013, vol. 2013, 1-10

Abstract:

Cross-docking, as a strategy to reduce lead time and enhance the efficiency of the fashion supply chain, has attracted substantial attention from both the academy and the industry. Cross-docking is a critical part of many fashion and textiles supply chains in practice because it can help to achieve many supply chain strategies such as postponement. We consider a model where there are multiple suppliers and customers in a single cross-docking center. With such a model setting, the issue concerning the coordinated routing between the inbound and outbound routes is much more complex than many traditional vehicle routing problems (VRPs). We formulate the optimal route selection problems from the suppliers to the cross-docking center and from the cross-docking center to the customers as the respective VRPs. Based on the relationships between the suppliers and the customers, we integrate the two VRP models to optimize the overall traveling time, distance, and waiting time at the cross-docking center. In addition, we propose a novel mixed 0/1 integer linear programming model by which the complexity of the problem can be reduced significantly. As demonstrated by the simulation analysis, our proposed model can be solved very efficiently by a commonly used optimization software package.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/MPE/2013/362980.pdf (application/pdf)
http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/MPE/2013/362980.xml (text/xml)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hin:jnlmpe:362980

DOI: 10.1155/2013/362980

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Mathematical Problems in Engineering from Hindawi
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mohamed Abdelhakeem ().