Truck and Cross-Docking Scheduling in the Flower Export Sector in Colombia

Abstract

The Colombian flower sector accounts for approximately 4% of the country’s total exports. The logistics of flower exports involve urban or peri-urban internal transport to international airports. Trucks with flowers face major problems related to heavy traffic and long queues at the airport parking areas and unloading docks creating congestion and emissions. We study both a queue management system and a scheduling system for trucks, similar to those used in container terminals, with provisions for road traffic for realistic-sized problems. We used real data from our previous studies and from external sources to test our model. The results are discussed and analyzed, taking into consideration the constraints of the actual airport operations and the flower business. The results show that the current operation of the airport cargo terminal can be significantly improved with both queue management and scheduling systems. We finally discuss the implementation of these two systems.