A Strategy for Yard Crane Scheduling Based on Hybrid Parallel Genetic Algorithm

Container terminals play a crucial role in container transportation, including shipping and land transportation. In particular, container yard management, which involves diverse operational services, significantly affects the operational efficiency of the entire container terminal. However, there is a major omission in existing work, viz., it is imperative to attain an effective workload scheduling to support the dynamic scheduling of yard cranes. Based on these understandings, the study aims at postulating a novel strategy in terms of yard crane scheduling. In this manner, a dynamic scheduling model using objective programming for yard cranes is initially developed based on rolling-horizon approach. To resolve the NP-hard problem regarding the yard crane scheduling, a hybrid algorithm which employs heuristic rule and parallel genetic algorithm, is then employed. Finally, a case simulation study has been used for system illustration, and then verifies the validity and usefulness of the model and the algorithm.