Berthing ships at a multi-user container terminal with a limited quay capacity

This paper addresses a variation of the berth allocation problem at multi-user terminals, as ships which would normally be served at the terminal but their expected wait time exceeds the time limit, are assigned to an external terminal. The objective of the problem is to minimize the total service time of ships at the external terminal. A genetic algorithm based heuristic is developed and a wide variety of numerical experiments showed that the heuristic developed performed well in reducing external terminal usage and thus may be helpful in the efficient management of busy ports during extreme peaking conditions.