An optimal solution to dock door assignment problem

This paper addresses issues at the shipping/receiving dock of a shipping company, where trucks arrive from vendors to have their shipments unloaded, sorted, and reloaded onto trucks going to the customers. The assignment of dock doors to incoming and outgoing trucks determines the efficiency of the dock operation. A bilinear programming model is proposed to solve the assignment problem. BZBDD.U.~II~I A large shipping company has several freight yards, located at different cities throughout the country. Inbound truck