A Berth Scheduling Problem under Sailing Schedule Disruption

Abstract

In multi-user container terminals, the berth schedule, in which, the berthing position, the berthing time and the number of the quay cranes are arranged for each ship, is made in advance based on the sailing schedule of the coming ships. However, in practice, the sailing schedule is often disrupted for many reasons, such as bad weather, or the decisions from the ship companies, etc. This kind of disruption will cause the original schedule in corresponding ports to be no longer optimal, simply unfeasible. Thus, the berth scheduling problem with sailing schedule disrupted was addressed in this paper. Initially, the disruptions from the sailing schedule were divided into the three following types: scheduled ships skipping over the port, ships changing their arrival time, and unscheduled ships arriving at the port. Subsequently, based on the theory of disruption management, a recovery model and deviation from the original schedule was established with the performance of the new schedule and the recovery cost considered. To solve the model, a heuristic algorithm based on neighborhood search was proposed; therefore, there were advantages utilized with the original information to formulate a fast solution. To conclude this information examples have been provided to show the efficiency of the proposed approach.