The block relocation problem with appointment scheduling

Ahmed Azab and Hiroshi Morita

European Journal of Operational Research, 2022, vol. 297, issue 2, 680-694

Abstract: In many container terminals, containers are piled vertically and horizontally in the terminal yard, limited mainly by the dimensions of the yard crane. Import and export containers are typically stacked separately. An external truck can access the terminal to pick up an import container only after making an appointment reserving a pickup time. To reduce truck waiting time inside the terminal, container pickup appointments are normally scheduled on a time window basis. However, when a truck arrives at the terminal yard at the appointed time, it is common for the target container not to be at the top of its stack, resulting in unproductive relocations to remove all the containers stacked above the target container and thus increasing the truck's waiting time. To minimize the number of relocations, the Block Relocation Problem (BRP) is usually solved independently, without consideration of appointment scheduling. In this paper, we introduce a new optimization problem—the Block Relocation Problem with Appointment Scheduling (BRPAS)—to jointly address the two issues. To solve the problem, two binary IP models are proposed, and examples from the literature are solved to confirm the performance of the two models. The proposed formulations are further extended to cover several operational aspects related to the flexibility of container pickup operations. Results show that the proposed approach can improve container relocation operations at terminal yards by coordinating with appointment scheduling.

Keywords: OR in maritime industry; Block relocation problem; Appointment scheduling; Integer programming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221721005130
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:297:y:2022:i:2:p:680-694

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2021.06.007

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().