Integrated bay allocation and yard crane scheduling problem for transshipment containers

The integrated problem for bay allocation and yard crane scheduling in transshipment container terminals was addressed. Unlike space allocation under the entire yard overview and slot assignment within a yard bay, the bay allocation problem focuses on a block and aims to allocate bay resource to fleets of transshipment containers in a more efficient way. The receiving operation and retrieving operation in the storage yards were considered simultaneously to achieve a more efficient operation of yard crane. The bay allocation and the yard crane scheduling were integrated as a whole process. A mixed integer programming model was developed for the problem formulation with the objective of minimizing total costs, including yard crane cost and delay cost. Considering the high complexity of the problem, a simulated annealing heuristic algorithm was developed to obtain near-optimal solutions. Numerical experiments were also conducted to test the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.