An optimization methodology for intermodal terminal management

A solution to the problems of resource allocation and scheduling of loading and unloading operations in a container terminal is presented. The two pro blems are formulated and solved hierarchically. First, the solution of the resource allocation problem returns, over a number of work shifts, a set of quay cranes used to load and unload containers from the moored ships and t he set of yard cranes to store those containers on the yard. Then, a schedu ling problem is formulated to compute the loading and unloading lists of co ntainers for each allocated crane. The feasibility of the solution is verif ied against a detailed, discrete-event based, simulation model of the termi nal. The simulation results show that the optimized resource allocation, wh ich reduces the costs by [frac13], can be effectively adopted in combinatio n with the optimized loading and unloading list. Moreover, the simulation s hows that the optimized lists reduce the number of crane conflicts on the y ard and the average length of the truck queues in the terminal.