Simultaneous waterway scheduling, berth allocation, and quay crane assignment: A novel matheuristic approach

Abstract

Maritime shipment plays a pivotal role in goods transportation worldwide. Ships intending to load/unload a cargo should visit a port. Three main steps are taken during this process. Firstly, ships go through a waterway to reach the berthing area. Secondly, they are allocated to eligible wharves, and quay cranes are assigned to them. At last, ships leave the port area through the waterway. In this paper, the three mentioned stages are considered and solved in an integrated manner. A two-way waterway is deemed with the width limitation for ships moving in opposite directions. Furthermore, ships may arrive during the planning horizon. Tidal impacts, draft limit, and safety distance between ships are prominent maritime limitations included in this paper. As the three stages take place consecutively, the problem appears to resemble a hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with unrelated parallel machines, machine eligibility constraint, and shared resources. Following this attitude, a mathematical model is developed. Due to the problem complexity, three distinct matheuristic approaches are developed by combining the genetic algorithm, discrete differential evolution, and grey wolf optimiser with a mathematical model and tested using randomly-generated numerical instances. At last, developed matheuristics are compared, and some managerial insights are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybrid flow shop
• waterway scheduling
• berth allocation
• quay crane assignment
• matheuristic approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Soroush Fatemi-Anaraki

Soroush Fatemi-Anaraki is a Ph.D. student in production and supply chain management at Technical University of Munich, Germany. He did his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Industrail Engineering at College of Engineering, University of Tehran in Iran. His research interests comprise production planning, scheduling, logistics, applied operations research, and machine learning.

Reza Tavakkoli-Moghaddam

Reza Tavakkoli-Moghaddam is a Professor of Industrial Engineering at the College of Engineering, University of Tehran in Iran. He obtained his Ph.D., M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne (1998), University of Melbourne in Melbourne (1994), and Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran (1989), respectively. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Industrial Engineering published by the University of Tehran and the Editorial Board member of nine reputable academic journals. He is the recipient of the 2009 and 2011 Distinguished Researcher Awards and the 2010 and 2014 Distinguished Applied Research Awards at University of Tehran, Iran. He has been selected as the National Iranian Distinguished Researcher in 2008 and 2010 by the MSRT (Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology) in Iran. He has obtained the outstanding rank as the top 1% scientist and researcher in the world elite group since 2014. Also, he received the Order of Academic Palms Award as a distinguished educator and scholar for the insignia of Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the Ministry of National Education of France in 2019. He has published 5 books, 25 book chapters, and more than 1000 journal and conference papers.

Dorsa Abdolhamidi

Dorsa Abdolhamidi is a Ph.D. student in Management of Technology at College of Management of Technology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. She obtained her M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Industrial Engineering from University of Tehran in Iran. Her research interests include applied optimisation and scheduling problems.

Behdin Vahedi-Nouri

Behdin Vahedi-Nouri is a Ph.D. student in Industrial Engineering at College of Engineering, University of Tehran in Iran. He obtained his M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Bu-Ali Sina University and Iran University of Science and Technology, respectively. His research interests include scheduling in manufacturing and healthcare systems, applied operations research, and logistics optimisation. He has published several papers in reputable journals and international conferences.