Abstract—In this paper, we address a resource management problem under the time window constraints in cross docks. The resources specify the operators working in cross dock terminal. The times as well as the resources required by each operation (unloading, sorting and loading) are considered. The objective aims to minimize the total resource number in cross dock in order to minimize the total cost, which includes labor cost and undelivered good penalty cost. We consider two different resource assignment rules: non-shared resource rules and shared resource rules. Two methods are proposed to deal with this problem: the mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation and the simulation using Petri net. First, the problem is formulated as a MIP model in which the resources at each work station are not shared. Then to evaluate the MIP model, the operations in cross dock are simulated using Petri net. Last, according the simulation results, a second MIP model with shared resources is proposed. The computational results show that the second MIP model outperforms the first one for organizing and distributing resources in cross dock.