Abstract
To enable the efficient division of labor in container yards, many large ports apply twin cranes, two identical automated stacking cranes each dedicated to one of the transfer zones on the seaside and landside. The use of a handshake area, a bay of containers that separates the dedicated areas of the two cranes, is a simple means to avoid crane interference. Inbound containers arriving in the transfer zone of one crane and dedicated to a stacking position of the other crane’s area are placed intermediately in the handshake area by the first crane and then taken over by the second crane, and vice versa for outbound containers. Existing research only evaluates simple heuristics and rule-based approaches for the coordination of twin cranes interconnected by a handshake area. For this setting, accounting for precedence constraints due to stacking containers in the handshake area, we derive exact solution procedures under a makespan minimization objective. In this way, a comprehensive computational evaluation is enabled, which benchmarks heuristics with optimal solutions and additionally compares alternative crane settings (i.e., without workload sharing and cooperation with flexible handover). We further provide insights into where to position the handshake area. Our results reveal that when planning is too simple (i.e., with a rule-based approach), optimality gaps become large, but with sophisticated optimization, the price of a simplified crane coordination via a handshake area is low.
Highlights
Economies of scale in transportation coupled with modern, more fuel-efficient engines have led to increased ship sizes
We focus on the makespan, but would like to emphasize that extending crane scheduling with a handshake area to other objectives is a valid task for future research
Whenever optimal solutions are not available because none of the three competitors could prove an optimal solution, we report the gap to the maximum lower bound obtained by our three branch and bound (B&B) when having a runtime of 600 seconds
Summary
Economies of scale in transportation coupled with modern, more fuel-efficient engines have led to increased ship sizes. The seaside crane can prematurely return to the seaside access point, whereas the landside crane completes the previous container move and delivers the box from its intermediate storage position to its dedicated storage position We call this type of cooperation, where any open storage position is a potential intermediate storage position for a container move subdivided into two legs operated by different cranes, any-bay handover. We benchmark the application of a handshake area with an any-bay handover In this way, practitioners under high competitive pressure to ensure fast and reliable container handling processes, especially during seaside workload peaks, receive some decision support on how to operate their twin cranes efficiently.
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