Heuristics for quay crane scheduling at indented berth

This paper discusses the quay crane scheduling problem at indented berth, an extension to the current quay crane scheduling problem in the field of container terminal operation. A mixed integer programming model by considering the unique features of the quay crane scheduling problem at indented berth is formulated. For solution, decomposition heuristic framework is developed and enhanced by Tabu search. To evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristic framework, a comprehensive numerical test is carried out and its results show the good quality of the proposed heuristic framework.

► A mixed integer programming model for the quay crane scheduling problem at indented berth is developed. ► The proposed problem is decomposed into two subproblems, namely task assigning and task scheduling. ► Heuristics are devised to cope with each subproblem and Tabu search embedded with hashing technique is used to enhance the solution quality. ► Numerical experiments are conducted and show the effectiveness of the proposed heuristics.