Port optimization: the integrated berth allocation and crane assignment problem

Abstract

Port logistics play a key role in today's global economy, and improving its efficiency has been a subject of research for the past two decades. The Berth Allocation and Crane Assignment problem consists in deciding the location of incoming vessels in a port and defining a crane schedule to serve them. We consider a version of the problem that conceives distinguishable cranes and multiple materials. In this research we give a MILP formulation of the problem and design a Genetic Algorithm that we use for speeding up an exact solver (CPLEX) and for solving large instances that are intractable in an exact way.