Scheduling of container-handling equipment during the loading process at an automated container terminal

• Published in: Computers & industrial engineering Vol. 149; p. 106848
• Main Authors: Luo, Jiabin, Wu, Yue
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2020
• Subjects: Adaptive GA; Automated container terminal; Container handling equipment; Container loading; Mixed integer programming; Mixed integer programming; Automated container terminal; Adaptive GA; Container loading; Container handling equipment
• ISSN: 0360-8352; 1879-0550
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2020.106848

•Integration of scheduling all container handling equipment in loading process is studied.•Optimal solutions are obtained for small-sized problems.•An efficient adaptive GA is designed for large-sized problems.•Efficiency analysis is carried out for large-sized problems.•Single cycle and dual cycle operations are compared in terms of computational efficiency. To improve the operational efficiency of container terminals, it is important to consider the coordination of different types of container-handling equipment, which typically include vehicles, yard cranes and quay cranes. This paper addresses the integration of scheduling each constituent of handling equipment in an automated container terminal, in order to minimise the loading element of the ship’s berthing time. A mixed-integer programming (MIP) model was developed to mathematically formulate this challenge. Small-sized problems can be solved optimally using existing solver. In order to obtain approximately optimal solutions for large-sized problems, an adaptive heuristic algorithm was created that can adjust the parameters of a genetic algorithm (GA), according to the observed performance. Experiments were carried out for both small-sized and large-sized problems to analyse the impact of equipment used in the loading process on berthing and computation times, as well as to test the efficiency of our proposed adaptive GA in solving this integrated problem.