Article ID: | iaor20164368 |
Volume: | 49 |
Issue: | 4 |
Start Page Number: | 990 |
End Page Number: | 1005 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2015 |
Journal: | Transportation Science |
Authors: | Goh Mark, Souza Robert de, Wu Yong, Petering Matthew E H, Li Wenkai |
Keywords: | scheduling, combinatorial optimization |
Container terminals require robust scheduling algorithms for yard cranes to optimally determine the sequence of storage and retrieval operations in yard blocks for higher container terminal performance. This paper investigates the multiple yard crane scheduling problem within a generic yard block and considers the operational restrictions such as the crane noncrossing constraint and models the crane travel time realistically. Further, the fact that any two adjacent cranes must keep an operational safety distance is also taken into consideration. These physical constraints limit the mobility of yard cranes and greatly render the scheduling difficulty for such pieces of equipment. This paper proposes a clustering‐reassigning approach, which fully considers all of the operational constraints in practice. The complexity of the approach is