Effective algorithms for integrated scheduling of handling equipment at automated container terminals

P.J.M. Meersmans and Albert Wagelmans

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: In this paper we consider the problem of integrated scheduling of various types of handling equipment at an automated container terminal, where the objective is to minimize the makespan of the schedule. We present a Branch & Bound algorithm that uses various combinatorial lower bounds. Computational experiments show that this algorithm is able to produce optimal or near optimal schedules for instances of practical size in a reasonable time. We also develop a Beam Search heuristic that can be used to tackle very large problem instances. Our experiments show that for such instances the heuristic obtains close to optimal solutions in a reasonable time.

Keywords: AGV's; Container terminal; beam search; branch & bound; scheduling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C69 M M11 R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-06-08
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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