Model and algorithm for the berth allocation problem with time windows

The berth allocation problem studies the optimal scheduling of assigning arrival ships to berths along a quay in container terminals. The objective is to minimize the total service time for all ships in the planning horizon. The time window constraints on the service time of ships and the available time of berth are considered in this paper. And a new model and a heuristic based on the tabu search algorithm are developed for this berth allocation problem with time windows. We conduct eight computational experiments which showed that the proposed algorithm is adaptable to the real world application. And for larger sizes it is always better than the CPLEX on computational time. So this method may be helpful in the efficient management of busy terminals during extreme peaking conditions.