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Dynamic programming algorithms for the general quay crane double-cycling problem with internal-reshuffles

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Abstract

High utilization of quay cranes is a major objective pursued by seaport terminal managers. Double-cycling technique has been shown to be effective in practice. Complicated with reshuffle operations, the productivity of quay cranes could be further improved, but the problem complexity increases as a side-effect. This paper studies a double-cycling quay crane scheduling problem in which reshuffle containers can be handled internally on the vessel. For this problem, no exact algorithm exists in the literature. We present a dynamic programming approach to optimally solve the problem. Our algorithm runs in polynomial time when the number of container stacks is fixed. We also extend our proposed optimal algorithm to the general case where hatch covers are involved.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive suggestions! The authors would also like to thank Prof. Chung-Yee Lee for his sharp and constructive comments! This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71531011, 71832001, 71771048 and 71571134). The work was also the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, Shanghai, 200051, China

    Feifeng Zheng, Yaxin Pang & Yinfeng Xu

  2. School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Ming Liu

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  1. Feifeng Zheng
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  2. Yaxin Pang
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  3. Ming Liu
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  4. Yinfeng Xu
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Correspondence to Ming Liu.

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Zheng, F., Pang, Y., Liu, M. et al. Dynamic programming algorithms for the general quay crane double-cycling problem with internal-reshuffles. J Comb Optim 39, 708–724 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10878-019-00508-9

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