Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Rabat, Morocco, April 11-13, 2017 1184 Resolution of the vehicle routing problem with cross-docking Sanae LARIOUI 1 ENSATE, University of Abdelmalek Essaadi, Mhannech II, BP 2121 Tetouan, Morocco Sanae.larioui@gmail.com Mohamed REGHIOUI 1 ENSATE, University of Abdelmalek Essaadi, Mhannech II, BP 2121 Tetouan, Morocco m.reghioui@gmail.com Abstract In this paper we address the VRPCD, in which a set of homogeneous vehicles are used to transport products from the suppliers to customers via a cross-dock. The products can be consolidated at the cross-dock but cannot be stored for very long as the cross-dock does not have long-term inventory-holding capabilities. The objective of the VRPCD is to minimize the total traveled distance while respecting time window constraints of suppliers and customers and a time horizon for the whole transportation operation. Rummaging through all the work of literature on vehicle routing problems with cross-docking, there is no work that considers that customer will receive its requests from several suppliers; this will be the point of innovation of this work. To solve this problem, four algorithms are proposed: A memetic algorithm, a tabu search, an evolutionary local search and an Iterated local search are used to solve the problem. The proposed algorithms are implemented and tested on data sets involving up to 200 nodes (customers and suppliers). The first results show that the memetic algorithm can produce high quality solutions. Keywords Cross-docking; Vehicle Routing Problem, Memetic algorithm, tabu search, ILS, ELS 1- Introduction The problem considered in this paper involves a set of known customer orders or requests, each one characterized by the cargo size, the pickup point and the place where it has to be delivered. These requests are picked up by a fleet of homogeneous vehicles, consolidated at the cross-dock, and immediately delivered to customers by the same set of vehicles, without intermediate storage. During the consolidation, goods are unloaded from the inbound vehicles and reloaded on outbound vehicles. In other words, a vehicle starting from the cross-dock first collects several requests at their pickup points, drives back to the cross dock, and unloads some but not necessarily all orders. Some loads may remain in the truck if the same vehicle will transport them to their destinations. Then, the truck moves to the assigned shipping door, loads some additional requests and goes out again to serve the delivery locations. After completing their tours, delivery vehicles return to the cross dock. The objective is to determine the best pickup and delivery routes as well as the arrival times of pickup/delivery vehicles at the cross -dock so that all nodes are visited within their time windows at minimum total transportation cost, including variable and fixed costs.