Abstract
Abstract Crossdocks play an important role in supply chain operations. Due to the need to decrease transportation lead time to coordinate with other supply chain activities such as just-in-time, make-to-order, or merge-in-transit strategies, shortening the total transfer time at crossdocks is increasingly important. In this research, we use real-time information about freight transferring within a crossdock to schedule waiting inbound trailers in order to reduce the time freight spends in a crossdock. We use dynamic simulation models to compare the performance of several strategies. These are first-come, first-served, look-ahead, minimum processing time, and minimum total time policies. We examine these under different trailer arrival headways, crossdock layouts, and destination distributions. Our simulation results show that our time-based algorithms save more time than the first-come, first-served and look-ahead policies. In addition, these algorithms appear to result in higher service reliability and productivity.