Towards designing and operating physical internet cross-docks: Problem specifications and research perspectives

Cross-docking is a common logistics practice applied in transit platforms to synchronize inbound and outbound vehicles in order to avoid keeping in-between storage. The practice plays a critical role to accelerate transportation flows. In this paper, we focus on Physical Internet (PI or pi) cross-docks and discuss how this concept changes the current classical design, management and optimization of crossdocking platforms. We present the optimization problems related to cross-docks in the PI context and highlight the distinctive features of a pi-cross-dock. A review of the existing literature on the main ideas and components of the pi-concept, and on the design and operations of pi-cross-docks ( pi-hubs) is firstly presented. Then, the functional design of the pi-cross-dock and the classical one are discussed while highlighting the distinctive features of both configurations. The different cross-docking optimization problems arising from the PI paradigm are then specified at the strategic, tactical and operational decision levels, showing how they differ from the problems already addressed for traditional cross-docking platforms. Finally, as a proof of concept, a preliminary study is carried out on one of the newly specified problems. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper focuses on the optimization problems of cross-docks in the context of Physical Internet (PI). It discusses the distinctive features of PI cross-docks and how they differ from traditional cross-docking platforms. The paper also reviews existing literature and presents a preliminary study to further explore the concept of PI cross-docks.