Vehicle dispatching at seaport container terminals using evolutionary algorithms

In the last four decades (1960-2000), the container, as an essential part of a unit-load-concept, has scored a great success in international sea freight transportation. With increasing containerization, the number of seaport container terminals and competition have increased considerably. One of the success factors of a terminal is related to the time in port for container vessels and the transshipment rates the ship operators have to pay. We describe the main logistics processes in seaport container terminals and present methods for their optimization. We focus on the process of container transport by gantry cranes and straddle carriers between the container vessel and the container yard. The primary objective is the reduction of the time in port for the vessels by maximizing the productivity of the gantry cranes, or in other words, minimizing the delay times of container transports that causes the gantry cranes to stop. We investigate different dispatching strategies for straddle carriers to gantry cranes and show the potential of evolutionary algorithms to improve the solutions.