Abstract:
In container terminals, the efficiency of loading operations in a container yard highly
depends on the productivity of yard cranes. In loading operation, yard cranes have to
pick-up the containers which are stacked in the yard-bays to satisfy the work schedule
requirement of quay crane, the equipment for loading and unloading containers to and
from a container ship. Therefore, a well managed schedule of yard cranes to pick-up
containers has to be considered. This thesis focuses on operating multiple yard cranes
among storage blocks, allowing multiple yard cranes over a block of yard-bays. The
objective of the pick-up scheduling problem is to minimize the total container handling time, which consists of the traveling distance and the setup time of yard cranes in a container yard.
A mixed integer programming model of the pick-up scheduling problem for operating
a single yard crane over a storage block has been proposed. The mathematical model
has been extended to solve the considered problem for operating multiple yard cranes
over storage blocks. It is very difficult to obtain the optimal solution through the
commercially available software. A genetic algorithm has been proposed to solve the
pick-up scheduling problem for operating multiple yard cranes over storage blocks.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed GA, a randomly generated set of
various problem sizes have been tested. The computational results acquired from the
experiments show that the proposed GA is an effective method for solving the pick-up
scheduling problem of operating multiple yard cranes over storage blocks during a
loading operation in a container yard.
