An investigation into knowledge‐based yard crane scheduling for container terminals

To resolve the problems of operational efficiency, energy consumption and operational cost of an entire container terminal, the yard crane scheduling secures a crucial position during terminal operational process. Accordingly, it is imperative to develop an efficient yard crane scheduling strategy. In this study, the knowledge acquisition was initially conducted. Subsequently, a knowledge sorting process, including the taxonomic tree generation and organization of acquired knowledge, was completed. Afterwards, the rules were extracted for the purpose of yard crane scheduling. Furthermore, a mechanism was deployed for knowledge reasoning. Consequently, a knowledge‐based system was established with regard to yard crane scheduling. To this end, a case study was used to illustrate the proposed knowledge‐based system.