Blocks allocation and handling equipment scheduling in automatic container terminals

Abstract

The blocks allocation and integrated scheduling of quay cranes (QCs), yard cranes(YCs), and automated guided vehicles(AGVs) between the apron, side-loading blocks and end-loading blocks for multiple berthing ships is investigated, where the inbound, outbound and transship containers from several ships berthing at the same time is considered. A multi-ship blocks-sharing strategy is proposed to increase the efficiency in double cycling operations of YCs and AGVs through centrally storing containers from different ships. A two-stage mixed integer programming model is formulated in which the first stage is to optimize the problem of blocks allocation and QCs scheduling, and the second stage is to optimize the problem of YCs and AGVs scheduling. To solve the model, adaptive variable neighbourhood immune algorithm (AVNIA) and rule-based heuristic algorithm are proposed. Compared with the lower bound compiled with Gurobi, ANVIN is highly effective based on case study layout data of the automated container terminal of Yangshan port, Shanghai. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed blocks-sharing strategy can significantly improve the utilization rate of YCs and AGVs, and effectively reduce the operation cost of automatic container terminals.