An integrated quay crane assignment and scheduling problem with several contractors in container terminals

The last decade has seen the important role of container terminals in the functionality of global trade centers. From another point of view, the high cost of Quay Cranes (QCs) is a motivation for solving a set of real-world problems including Quay Crane Assignment Problem (QCAP) and the Quay Crane Scheduling Problem (QCSP) in the hotspot of research. The main innovation of this proposal is to integrate both QCAP and QCSP to improve the performance of QC with emphasis on optimization, i.e., QCASP. A real case study in Iran was applied to validate the proposed problem which was formulated by a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP). Due to the inherent complexity of the problem proposed in the real-world cases, the Teaching-Learning-Based-Optimization (TLBO) algorithm was used to nd an optimal/global solution in a reasonable span of time. The applied TLBO was tuned by Taguchi method and validated in small instances in comparison with an exact method. The computational results showed that our proposed TLBO algorithm could solve Quay Crane Assignment and Scheduling Problem (QCASP), especially in large-size instances, successfully. Finally, some managerial implications are recommended to consider the benets of the proposed methodology and the high-eciency of the algorithm regarding the real case study presented.