Optimal Scheduling Model of Yard Cranes in Container Yard

Since yard cranes are the most popular container handling equipment in the container terminals, rational yard cranes deployment solutions are of great important to the efficiency of container handling operations in container terminals. This paper discusses the problem of scheduling multiple yard cranes among blocks to perform a given set of loading or unloading jobs in a container yard. This deployment problem is formulated as an integer nonlinear program. The objective function of the formulation is to minimize the makespan for multiple yard cranes to complete all the tasks, which includes the operating time at each container handling and the travel time between tasks. The performance of the model is evaluated by compared with a modified model, whose objective function is minimizing the travel time of yard cranes. And it proves that the model formulated in this paper is effective.