Yard crane dispatching to minimize vessel turnaround times in container terminals

Yard crane (YC) dispatching in the operational planning of container terminals usually aims to minimize makespan of YC operations or waiting time of vehicles. We propose that minimizing the maximum tardiness of vehicle jobs at yard blocks will minimize the operational delay of the longest quay crane (QC). This will minimize vessel turnaround time which is one of the most important objectives of container terminals. A provably optimal algorithm, MMT-RBA* to minimize maximum job tardiness, is presented to sequence the YC jobs. Jobs requiring reshuffling of other containers, often ignored in other studies, are handled by embedded simulation in our optimization algorithms. Another provably optimal algorithm, MMS-RBA* to minimize makespan, is also presented. Simulation experiments confirm that MMT-RBA* significantly outperforms the optimal algorithm RBA* to minimize vehicle waiting time from earlier studies and MMS-RBA* to minimize makespan in minimizing vessel turnaround time.