Yard crane dispatching to minimize total weighted vessel turnaround times in container terminals

Abstract

In traditional approaches, the objective of yard crane (YC) dispatching is usually to minimize makespan of YC operations or to minimize vehicle waiting time. However, one of the most important objectives of terminal operation management is to minimize total weighted vessel turnaround time. We prove that minimizing the maximum tardiness of vehicle jobs from one vessel will minimize the vessel’s turnaround time. Therefore minimizing the total weighted maximum tardiness of all YCs’ jobs will minimize the total weighted vessel turnaround time. We propose algorithm MTWMT to minimize total weighted maximum job tardiness. We compare the performance of our algorithm with the optimal algorithms RBA* and MMS-RBA* from earlier studies. RBA* minimizes total vehicle waiting time while MMS-RBA* minimizes makespan. Experimental results confirm that MTWMT is most effective in reducing total weighted vessel turnaround time.