Journal
TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH PART C-EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Volume 52, Issue -, Pages 132-143Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2015.01.024
Keywords
Container retrieval; Rail mounted gantry crane (RMGC); Container yard; Multi-lift; Heuristic
Categories
Funding
- National Research Council, Taiwan [NSC98-2221-E-006-151-MY2, MOST 103-2410-H-006-079-MY3]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The demand for container terminal yards is growing significantly faster than the supply of available land; therefore, containers are typically stacked high to better utilize the land space in container yards. However, in the process of container retrieval, non-productive reshuffling may be required to relocate the containers that are stacked on top of the target container. Container retrieval is directly related to the operational efficiency of terminals. Because the industry has become increasingly competitive, it has become critical to introduce a systematic approach to retrieving containers. In this study, we develop a heuristic that can generate feasible working plans for rail-mounted gantry cranes (RMGC) in container yards to minimize the number of container movements while taking the RMGC working time into consideration. The methodology takes into consideration the case that containers are grouped in terms of their retrieval order. Multi-lift RMGC models also are studied. Comprehensive numerical experiments reveal that the method runs faster than other methods published in the literature by several orders of magnitude; additionally, our method is able to solve instances larger than practical use. The number of movements approaches a theoretical lower bound, and the numerical results clearly demonstrate the tradeoff between the number of movements and the working time, and provide useful insights for yard planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available