Optimization Of Berths And Quay Cranes Scheduling Based On The Flexible Berthing In Container Terminals

With the rapidly changing international ports competition in the market, it is particularly important for the domestic ports to improve the efficiency to satisfy the needs of more customers under limited resources limitation. The reasonable distribution of the berth and quay cranes is very significant for reducing the ship stay in ports and improving unit time cart out of the ship. Due to berth resources’ non-renewable, optimizing the berth allocation, improving the quay cranes’loading and unloading efficiency in quayside, reducing the ships’ standing time in the port, and improving the berth utilization become key points of port container terminal operation. Therefore, it is significant for container terminals to determine the appropriate number of quay cranes and the appropriate location of container ships. The article studies production scheduling optimization methods for berths and quay cranes, and the main contents are as follows:1. Analyze berth allocation and quay cranes scheduling problem’s uncertainty factors and process in container ports based on literature review and summary.2. For the complexity of scheduling system about container ports’ berth allocation and quay cranes, the berth allocation and quay cranes are scheduled together in this paper and are based on flexible berthing way. This paper analyzes systematically for their berthing service rules, in particular.3. Set up the multi-objective optimization mathematical model of berths and quay cranes scheduling, based on many coming ships under the circumstance of flexible berthing way. And an uncertain priority approach is applied. The model is designed to minimize the total residence time of ship in the port, production costs of container terminal and the cost of punishment.4. According to a variety of decision scheme of container ships berthing location, design an algorithm, combined Genetic Algorithm (GA) with heuristic algorithm, to solve a variety of berthing scheme based on different berthing service rules. The algorithm adoptes the piecewise method to make it fit for the model well in the code, crossover and mutation stages of genetic algorithm. Under following the principle of First Come First Service, algorithm adjusts properly the order according to the size of priority.5. Combined with a numerical example, use the designned algorithm to solve the multi-objective instance model of berths and quay cranes scheduling based on the flexible berthing way, and make analysis and comparison for the optimal solution of different kinds of berthing rules. then, get an optimal scheduling scheme of the berth and quay cranes joint schedule and an optimal berthing rule.