In this paper we integrate at the tactical level two decision problems arising in container terminals: the berth allocation problem, which consists of assigning and scheduling incoming ships to berthing positions, and the quay crane assignment problem, which assigns to incoming ships a certain QC profile (i.e. number of quay cranes per working shift). We present two formulations: a mixed intege...

Container terminals are facilities where cargo containers are transshipped between different transport vehicles, for onward transportation. They are open systems that carry out a large number of different combinatorial problems that can be solved by means of Artificial Intelligence techniques. In this work, we focus our attention on scheduling a number of incoming vessels by assigning to each a...

A bi-objective mathematical model is developed to simultaneously consider the quay crane and yard truck scheduling problems at container terminals. Main real-world assumptions, such as quay cranes with non-crossing constraints, quay cranes’ safety margins and precedence constraints are considered in this model. This integrated approach leads to better efficiency and productivity at container te...

Ports are one of transportation’s logistic components crucial to supporting international trade and economic growth. Increasing at an average annual rate of 16%, the Port of Savannah has been America’s fastest-growing port since 2001. Because of this rapid growth, there is a need to develop a cost-effective means to explore and evaluate new productivity improvement alternatives (e.g. a facility...

Decision makers must face the dynamism and uncertainty of real-world environments when they need to solve the scheduling problems. Different incidences or breakdowns, for example, initial data could change or some resources could become unavailable, may eventually cause the infeasibility of the obtained schedule. To overcome this issue, a robust model and a proactive approach are presented for ...

In container terminals, discharging and loading of vessels are critical planning decisions which highly depend on the interaction between the quay cranes and internal trucks, they also have a significant impact on the terminal performance and revenue. Decisions on the assignments of quay cranes and internal trucks to the berthed vessels are typically made sequentially. However, the applicabilit...

Container terminals (CTs) play an essential role in the global transportation system. To deal with growing container shipments, a CT needs to better solve the three essential seaside operational problems; berth allocation problem (BAP), quay crane assignment problem (QCAP), and quay crane scheduling problem (QCSP), which affect the performance of a CT considerably. In past studies, the three se...

This report compares the performance of three double-cycling algorithms used to determine the sequence with which to load and unload containers from a vessel with a quay crane. Double cycling is a technique which can improve the efficiency of a quay crane and container port by unloading and loading containers in the same crane cycle. The three algorithms, the greedy strategy, the proximal strat...

The quay crane scheduling problem (QCSP) determines the handling sequence of tasks at ship bays by a set of cranes assigned to a container vessel such that the vessel’s service time is minimized. A number of heuristics or metaheuristics have been proposed to obtain the near-optimal solutions to overcome the NP-hardness of the problem. In this article, the idea of generalized extremal optimizati...