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 π) cross-docks and discuss how this concept changes the current classical design, management and optimization of cross-docking platforms. We present the optimization problems related to cross-docks in the PI context and highlight the distinctive features of a π-cross-dock. A review of the existing literature on the main ideas and components of the π-concept, and on the design and operations of π-cross-docks (π-hubs) is firstly presented. Then, the functional design of the π-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.