Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

Today's marketplace is moving faster than ever, and companies are challenged to distribute their products morex000D
quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. This has led to the rise of cross docking in the global supply chain tox000D
help keep pace with customer demand. Cross-docking refers to the practice of unloading goods or materialsx000D
from an incoming vehicle (e.g., truck, train or vessel container) and then loading them directly onto outboundx000D
vehicles with no storage in between.x000D
A common form of cross-docking operations corresponds to single or multi-item pallets, which are unloaded,x000D
sorted based on their destination, and placed directly onto outbound vehicles. This strategy allowsx000D
transportation companies to move towards more proactive, agile and flexible supply chains, with shorterx000D
product cycles and easier product customization.x000D
While the assignment of inbound/outbound vehicles to cross-dock doors has been widely studied, very fewx000D
studies exist on the lateness issues, i.e., (1) late return of containers to vessels when inbound vehicles arex000D
containers, and (2) late delivery to customers. We propose to investigate these lateness issues throughout thex000D
assignment of inbound containers to doors in order to minimize the tardiness penalties due to late containerx000D
returns, and the mitigation of it with the tardiness penalties associated to late or early delivery of goods tox000D
customers. We will assume that the schedule of the outbound vehicles to be given in the research projectsx000D
associated with the master students supported by the Engage grant, while the postdoctoral fellow (MITACSx000D
Elevate to be submitted shortly) will assume flexible truck scheduling.x000D
We plan to design meta-heuristic algorithms, which will integrate some machine learning tools in order tox000D
benefit from the lessons learned from the past in order to better estimate the travel times. Design and validation