An efficient approach for solving yard crane scheduling in a container terminal

An efficient approach for yard crane (YC) scheduling is proposed in this paper. The definition of task group for YC scheduling is proposed. A mixed integer programming (MIP) model is developed. In the model, objective functions are subject to the minimization of the total delay of complete time for all task groups and the minimization of block-to-block movements of YCs. Due to the computational scale of the non-deterministic polynomial (NP) complete problem regarding YC scheduling, a rolling-horizon decision-making strategy is employed to solve this problem, by converting the MIP model into another MIP model in the scheduling of each rolling period. Afterwards, a heuristic algorithm based on modified A* search is developed to solve the converted model and obtain near optimal solution. Finally, the computational experiments are used to examine the performance of the proposed approach for YC scheduling.