An investigation into knowledge-based yard crane scheduling for container terminals

To resolve the problems of operational efficiency, energy consumption and operational cost of an entire container terminal, the yard crane scheduling secures a crucial position during terminal operational process. Accordingly, it is imperative to develop an efficient yard crane scheduling strategy. In this study, the knowledge acquisition was initially conducted. Subsequently, a knowledge sorting process, including the taxonomic tree generation and organization of acquired knowledge, was completed. Afterwards, the rules were extracted for the purpose of yard crane scheduling. Furthermore, a mechanism was deployed for knowledge reasoning. Consequently, a knowledge-based system was established with regard to yard crane scheduling. To this end, a case study was used to illustrate the proposed knowledge-based system.