An Integrated Scheduling Problem of Container Handling Equipment in the Loading Operation at Automated Container Terminals

Abstract

In automated container terminals, containers are transported between ships and storage yard by differen types of vehicles, for example, guided vehicle (AGV, yard crane (YC) and quay crane (QC). To improve the productivity of the automated container terminals, it is important to harmoniously synchronize operations of different types of container handling equipment. This paper examines the scheduling problem of all handling equipment in an integrated way by utilizing information about yard storage locations for the loading operation in an automated container terminal. A mixed integer programming (MIP) model is developed. As the optimization software can only be used to solve small size problems, we develop a genetic algorithm (GA) to obtain approximate optimal solutions for large size problems. Computational results demonstrate the benefits of integrated model and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.