-Cross-docking co-ordinates the supply and delivery so that the goods arrive at the receiving area and transferred straight away to the loading area, where they are put into delivery vehicles.
-Cross docking is a flow-through concept as it is not desirable to interrupt flow of products anywhere, because space, brick and mortar is getting very expensive these days.
-Cross docking shifts the focus from “supply chain” to demand chain”.
-The stock coming into cross docking centre has already been pre-allocated against a replenishment order generated by a retailer in the supply chain.
-Cross docking encourages electronic communications between retailers and their suppliers.
-There are two forms of cross docking
(1)Basic cross Dock
•In this form packages are moved directly from the arriving vehicles to the departing ones.
•This form of cross docking does not need a warehouse and a simple transfer point is enough.
(2) Flow though Cross Dock
•In this case, when the materials arrive and they are in large packages, these packages are opened and broken into smaller quantities, sorted, consolidated and transferred to vehicles for delivering to different customers.
-Cross docking can be developed into a phase where nothing actually moves through a warehouse.
-The stock kept within the vehicles are referred to as “stock on wheels”.
-Nowadays, wholesalers use the method of drop-shipping, where they do not keep the stock themselves, but coordinate the movement of goods from the upstream suppliers to the downstream buyers.
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