Heuristic algorithms for routing yard-side equipment for minimizing loading times in container terminals

This paper discusses a method of routing yard-side equipment during loading operations in container terminals. Both the route of yard-side equipment (such as transfer cranes or straddle carriers) and the number of containers picked up at each yard-bay is determined simultaneously. The objective of the problem in this paper is to minimize the total container-handling time in a yard. The size of the search space can be greatly reduced by utilizing inherent properties of the optimal solution. An encoding method is introduced to represent solutions in the search space. A genetic algorithm and a beam search algorithm are suggested to solve the above problem. Numerical experiments have been conducted to compare the performances of the proposed heuristic algorithms against each other and against that of the optimal solution. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.