ABSTRACT
Abstract To reduce inventory and transportation costs, many distributors use a logistics technique called ‘‘crossdocking,’’ in which products in a warehouse move directly from inbound to outbound vehicles, without storage in between. Although products are rarely stored outright, they are often staged on the dock temporarily to facilitate value-added services, to
allow efficient loading of outbound trailers, or simply to accommodate unavoidable imbalances in flow. We identify, classify, and compare different protocols for staging pallets in a crossdock, and introduce a new kind of queue, called a ‘‘staging queue,’’ with which we model staging in the most common protocols.
