Title: An optimisation algorithm for container loading and unloading operations at maritime terminals

Authors: Erick P. Massami; Zhihong Jin

Addresses: Unit for Applied Mathematics, Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 2958, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania ' College of Transportation Management, Dalian Maritime University, 1 Linghai Road, Dalian, Liaoning 116026, China

Abstract: Optimisation of container loading and unloading operations at maritime terminals has increasingly become more important to terminal operators. This paper presents the optimisation algorithm (OA) for solving the hybrid flowshop scheduling problem for container terminal loading and unloading operations. The OA which composed of seven heuristics and genetic algorithm (GA) is used to estimate the minimum makespan for a number of problem instances. A lower bound is also developed to measure the effectiveness of the proposed optimisation procedure. Computational experiments reveal the efficiency of the OA.

Keywords: optimisation; container terminals; terminal operations; hybrid flow shop scheduling; container loading; container unloading; maritime terminals; genetic algorithms.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPSCM.2014.058893

International Journal of Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling, 2014 Vol.6 No.1, pp.61 - 74

Received: 18 Jul 2012
Accepted: 06 Mar 2013

Published online: 07 Jun 2014 *

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