Date of Graduation

5-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Industrial Engineering (MSIE)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Industrial Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Rossetti, Manuel D.

Committee Member

Parsa, Payam

Second Committee Member

Zhang, Shengfan

Keywords

cross-docking; supply chain performance; distribution centers; conceptual modeling; detailed modeling; product distribution; inventory network

Abstract

Companies are implementing new strategies to meet the customer requirements in terms of quality, timing, and cost. One of these strategies is cross-docking, which can be defined as the process of consolidating the products coming from different suppliers, but having the same destination, with minimal handling and almost no storage between loading and unloading of the goods. The purpose of this research is to investigate the benefits of having a cross-docking facility in a supply chain. In this research, we focus on developing discrete event simulation models using the opensource Java Simulation Library (JSL). Also, we work on augmenting an object-oriented library for simulating supply chains to include the modeling of cross-dock facilities. The modeling of a crossdock facility includes the receiving, staging/sorting, and load building activities. Because the operational performance of the inner workings of the cross-dock is not needed, detailed modeling of the resources within the cross-dock such as the number of workers, and pieces of equipment are not included in the modeling. However, the flow, time delays, and inventory aspects are modeled because the key emphasis is on how the cross-dock affects the performance of the supply chain. Simulation experiments are conducted to test the performance of the object-oriented library and to compare the performance of two multi-echelon inventory networks with and without crossdocking to identify the significant factors which affect the performance of the two types of supply chains.

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