Many supply chains strive to shorten the time between a customer’s order and the actual delivery of the
ordered goods. Cross docking is one of the options to reduce these response times. Cross docking facilities
are dynamic environments where products arrive and leave the same day. To deal with these dynamic
aspects, the need for efficient control policies in combination with flexible and easy to reconfigure storage
area layouts increases. We present a dynamic design methodology to select control policies and determine
layout rules for cross docking facilities. We present both advantages and disadvantages of the proposed
layout procedures. We use the cross docking center of the ‘‘Royal Horticultural Company Lemkes’’
in The Netherlands as the basis for a comparative analysis of the procedures presented. We show that, by
applying our design methodology, a savings of 16% can be obtained in total travel distances of employees.