Title: A Lagrangian relaxation approach for the integrated quay crane and internal truck assignment in container terminals

Authors: A. Karam; A.B. Eltawil

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, School of Innovative Design Engineering, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), P.O. Box 179, New Borg El-Arab City, 21934, Alexandria, Egypt ' Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, School of Innovative Design Engineering, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), P.O. Box 179, New Borg El-Arab City, 21934, Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract: The planning decisions related to the assignment of quay cranes and internal trucks to the berthed vessels in container terminals are typically made independently. However, a more reliable estimation for the vessels' handling times as well as the truck requirements can be achieved when such planning decisions are made simultaneously. This paper presents a mathematical model that can be used to solve the quay crane assignment problem, the specific quay crane assignment problem and the assignment of internal trucks to each quay crane simultaneously. The proposed model considers important practical aspects such as the limited availability and operation cost of the internal trucks. A Lagrangian relaxation, and subgradient optimisation procedure-based heuristic is proposed for the model. The performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm is investigated using actual container terminal data.

Keywords: internal trucks; container terminals; Lagrangian relaxation; quay cranes; subgradient optimisation; truck assignment; berthed vessel; mathematical modelling; crane assignment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2016.075665

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2016 Vol.24 No.1, pp.113 - 136

Received: 28 Jan 2015
Accepted: 12 Feb 2015
Published online: 31 Mar 2016 *

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