Solving methods for the quay crane scheduling problem at port of Tripoli-Lebanon

Abstract

The quay crane scheduling problem (QCSP) is a global problem and all ports around the world seek to solve it, to get an acceptable time of unloading containers from the vessels or loading containers to the vessels and therefore reducing the docking time in the terminal. This paper proposes three solutions for the QCSP in port of Tripoli-Lebanon, two exact methods which are the mixed integer linear programming and the dynamic programming algorithm, to obtain the optimal solution and one heuristic method which is the genetic algorithm, to obtain near optimal solution within an acceptable CPU time. The main objective of these methods is to minimize the unloading or the loading time of the containers and therefore reduce the waiting time of the vessels in the terminals. We tested and validated our methods for small and large random instances. Finally, we compared the results obtained with these methods for some real instances in the port of Tripoli-Lebanon.