Title: Efficiency considerations for sequencing and scheduling of double-rail-mounted gantry cranes at maritime container terminals

Authors: R. Stahlbock, S. Voβ

Addresses: Institute of Information Systems, University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 5, 20146 Hamburg, Germany; FOM Fachhochschule fur Oekonomie und Management, University of Applied Sciences, Essen/Hamburg, Germany. ' Institute of Information Systems, University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 5, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

Abstract: The current decade has seen a considerable growth in worldwide container transportation and with it, an indispensable need for optimisation. This paper seeks to investigate to which extent double-rail-mounted gantry cranes can help to improve a container terminal|s efficiency. A simulation study is conducted for evaluating different online algorithms for sequencing and scheduling of jobs for automated double-rail-mounted gantry cranes serving a terminal|s storage block. The experiments are based upon scenarios that are derived from the real world (Container Terminal Altenwerder, CTA, Hamburg, Germany) in order to investigate advantages as well as problems and limits of our algorithms and the specific crane systems. Furthermore, the influence of the horizontal transport at the block|s interfaces is examined.

Keywords: job scheduling; storage blocks; double-rail-mounted gantry cranes; optimisation; algorithms; Hamburg; Germany; Container Terminal Altenwerder; horizontal transportation; container operations; crane interference; crane assignments; shipping logistics; transport logistics; job sequencing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2010.029899

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2010 Vol.2 No.1, pp.95 - 123

Published online: 02 Dec 2009 *