Cooperation between a Holonic Logistics Execution System and a Vehicle Routing Scheduling System

The organization of the logistic operations in a cross-dock is complex. Cross-dock managers can be supported in this task by a logistics execution system (LES). A holonic LES uses a self-organizing and decentralized approach to control the cross-docking operations. Based on multi-agent technology, this approach aims to improve the robustness against disturbances. A drawback of this approach is however that this decentralized LES has no complete view on the system, in contrast to a centralized scheduling system. This paper presents the cooperation between a holonic LES and a vehicle routing scheduling system in order to combine the benefits of both systems. The holonic LES can benefit from the provided schedule to improve the global performance, while allowing the schedule to be executed, compensating for small deviations and possible simplifications. The results of some preliminary simulation experiments indicate that this cooperation can be realized and improves the global performance.