Crane Scheduling in Container Terminals

• This diploma thesis examines logistic problems occurring in a container terminal. The thesis focuses on the scheduling of cranes handling containers in a port. Two problems are discussed in detail: the yard crane scheduling of rubber-tired gantry cranes (RMGC) which move freely among the container blocks, and the scheduling of rail-mounted gantry cranes (RMGC) which can only move within a yard zone. The problems are formulated as integer programs. For each of the two problems discussed, two models are presented: In one model, the crane tasks are interpreted as jobs with release times and processing times while in the other model, it is assumed that the tasks can be modeled as generic workload measured in crane minutes. It is shown that the problems are NP-hard in the strong sense. Heuristic solution procedures are developed and evaluated by numerical results. Further ideas which could lead to other solution procedures are presented and some interesting special cases are discussed.

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