A Flexible Scheduling for Twin Yard Cranes at Container Terminals Considering Dynamic Cut-Off Time

Abstract

Yard handling is an important part of port logistics and affects the overall efficiency of the container port. The yard crane scheduling is affected by various external factors. For example, the dynamic cut-off time makes the release time of yard cranes variable, and the yard crane task arrangement will change frequently, resulting in a lot of computational time. To increase the flexibility of container yard handling, a twin yard cranes scheduling model is established considering the no-crossing constraints and the dynamic cut-off time. A joint scheduling of PSO and local re-scheduling strategy (LRPSO) is put forward to deal with the problem faster and more effectively. Small-scale and large-scale experiments are simulated to verify the performance of the proposed method. Results show that the scheduling method is more efficient.