An optimization methodology for intermodal terminal management

A solution to the problems of resource allocation and scheduling of loading and unloading operations in a container terminal is presented. The two problems are formulated and solved hierarchically. First, the solution of the resource allocation problem returns, over a number of work shifts, a set of quay cranes used to load and unload containers from the moored ships and the set of yard cranes to store those containers on the yard. Then, a scheduling problem is formulated to compute the loading and unloading lists of containers for each allocated crane. The feasibility of the solution is veri®ed against a detailed, discrete-event based, simulation model of the terminal. The simulation results show that the optimized resource allocation, which reduces the costs by 1 3 , can be effectively adopted in combination with the optimized loading and unloading list. Moreover, the simulation shows that the optimized lists reduce the number of crane con¯icts on the yard and the average length of the truck queues in the terminal.