Generating Job Schedules for Vessel Operations in a Container Terminal

Vessel discharge and load jobs in a container terminal can be divided into sequences, one for each assigned quay crane (QC). A QC sequence lists containers in their desired handling order. The common practice for operators is to make do with just this sequence, without generating a job schedule (i.e. desired start-times of handling each container). Operators who need job schedules generate crude ones by using an average gross crane rate (GCR) gleaned from past experience. For realism, the job schedules should recognize the limit the maximum number of prime-movers and yard cranes that it can deploy. In this paper, we study how job schedules can be efficiently generated that maximizes the GCR (or equivalently minimizes the QC total make-span). With an effective algorithm, resources available to a QC can be adjusted, sharing with other QCs, to ensure that its job sequence can be completed by the target end-time. This would lead to more efficient use of terminal resources and good control on the overall vessel completion time.