Crossdocking is the use of inbound receipts to satisfy outbound demands. You can use crossdocking to match outbound shipments to scheduled receipts in advance. This enables you to achieve faster flow-through times and optimize warehouse resources. Oracle Warehouse Management supports two types of crossdocking, planned crossdocking and opportunistic crossdocking. Planned crossdocking matches expected receipts to a demand source, and opportunistic crossdocking matches demands to received supply.
Crossdocking occurs during a period of time known as the crossdock planning horizon. The crossdock planning horizon is the time period within which the system considers demands with a schedule shipment date for crossdocking.
The earliest crossdock time is the beginning of the crossdock planning horizon. This is the maximum time difference that a scheduled receipt can lag with respect to the scheduled shipment time. For example, if the earliest crossdock time is four hours, and a demand exists with a scheduled shipment time of 6:00 p.m., then the system does not consider material with a scheduled receipt time that is earlier than 2:00 p.m.
The latest crossdock time is the end of the crossdock planning horizon. This is the minimum time difference that a scheduled receipt can lag with respect to the scheduled shipment time. For example, if the latest crossdock time is one hour, and a demand exists with a scheduled shipment time of 6:00 p.m., then the system does not consider material with a scheduled receipt time that is later than 5:00 p.m.
The crossdock window is the difference between the earliest and latest crossdock time. For example, if the earliest crossdock time is four hours, and the latest crossdock time is one hour, then the crossdock window is three hours.
You use planned crossdocking and opportunistic crossdocking for different scenarios. Planned crossdocking works best when you know your supply in advance. It enables you to control the throughput of your warehouse and matches known demand with expected supplies. Opportunistic crossdocking helps with uncertainties. It uses the rules engine to match newly arriving supply to existing demands. This helps in cases in which a supply or demand source is changed, modified, or cancelled.