Quay crane scheduling in automated container terminal for the trade-off between operation efficiency and energy consumption

doi:10.1016/j.aei.2021.101285

Advanced Engineering Informatics

Volume 48, April 2021, 101285

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2021.101285 Get rights and content

Abstract

At present, the automation of handling equipment has changed the operation mode in the automated container terminal. This paper investigates the automated quay crane scheduling problem (AQCSP) for the automated container terminal. The operation process of AQCSP is decomposed, and formulated it as a mixed integrated programming model. In the numerical experiments, the relation between operation efficiency and energy consumption has been quantitative analyzed by case study. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis of the ratios for all tasks in a vessel bay and the tasks in each stack are also presented. The findings of this study will provide a theoretical reference for the study on the trade-off operation efficiency and energy consumption on the operational level.

Introduction

Nowadays, the pace of large-scale container ship is developing continuously and it puts forward a higher requirement for the operational efficiency of container terminal [28], [22]. The seaside operations optimization has been an active field of research that aims at improving operations efficiency especially with the impressive growth of maritime trade activities [27], [29]. Quay cranes (QCs) are the main equipment to handle container loading and unloading along the seaside of transshipment terminals [9], [21], and one of the key operational bottlenecks at ports is QC availability[15]. Therefore, the optimization for QCs scheduling problem (QCSP) has been widely addressed and studied in depth.

An operational method to improve the productivity of QCs is the dual cycle operation in discharging and loading operations [24]. It can reduce operating time by 10%, improving vessel, crane and berth productivity [7], [6]. Subsequently, Meisel and Wichmann [16], Zhang et al. [23], He et al. [10] extended their research on the QCAP based on the dual cycle strategy. Meanwhile, Türkoullar et al. [19], Tan and He [18], Behnam et al. [3] and Zhen et al. [30], integrated the QCSP and berth allocation problem, internal truck assignment problem, since they are highly interrelated.

However, the emerging of automation equipment, especially automated quay crane (AQC), challenges the existing achievements of QCSP. Compared with the general QC, the spreader hoisting height of AQC can be precisely controlled due to their automatic control system. Therefore, for the proposed AQCSP, its operation mode is different from the QCSP. More importantly, the relation between operation efficiency and energy consumption has been changed from positive linear correlation to non-linear or even negative correlation, due to the operation sequence of containers can directly affect their hoisting height.

Therefore, this paper investigates the AQCSP which the automated container terminal oriented. The operation process of AQCSP is decomposed step by step, and formulated it as a mixed integrated programming model. In the numerical experiments, the relation between operation efficiency and energy consumption has been quantitative analyzed by case study, and the scenario analysis are also presented. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. An overview of related works is presented in Section 2. The problem is analyzed in Section 3 and the mathematical model and is presented in Sections 4. Numerical experiments are performed in Section 6, and in the last section the concluding remarks are presented.

By comparing with other research, the main contributions of this paper are summarized as follows: (1) the mathematical model for AQCSP is formulated, and the corresponding acceleration technology is applied; (2) the trade-off between operation efficiency and energy consumption for AQCSP in automated container is illustrated and quantitative analyzed by case study; (3) scenario analyses and managerial insights are performed for the AQSCP in container terminals.

Section snippets

Related works

The quay crane scheduling problems consider a set of containers to be unloaded and loaded at a single vessel and a set of assigned QCs. Containers can be clustered by containers, groups, bays, or bay areas to reduce the number of tasks to be scheduled and the complexity of the scheduling problem. For a comprehensive review of the methods addressed quay crane scheduling problems, review works are given by Bierwirth and Meisel [1], [2]. Besides, Sadeghian et al. [17] and Ji et al. [12] studied

Scheduling for automated quay crane

The general QCSP tries to find a sequence of container moves that converts the arrival configuration into the departure configuration in a bay (as shown in Fig. 1) within minimum service time or makespan. Therefore, the general QCSP could be considered as a classic traveling salesman problem (TSP). However, different from the general QC operated by manual handling control, the AQC is controlled by automatic program, which makes it can control container hoisting height precisely. (The AQC is not

Assumptions

The following assumptions should be clarified before formulating a mathematical model for the descripted problem. (1) The trolley and spreader moving at a constant speed, acceleration at the beginning and deceleration at the ending are not considered. (2) The containers to be loaded out of a given sequence (only constraint by their departure configuration), and assume that it could be arrival at the loading area in time once it should be operated. (3) Dual-cycling strategy is employed for

Numerical experiments

In this section, numerical experiments are conducted to analyze the correlation between operation efficiency and energy consumption, analyze the impact of scenarios, and generate a multitude of managerial insights. The proposed mixed integrated programming model is solved by ILOG CPLEX 12.9, and all experiments are run on a working station with Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 5118 CPU @ 2.3 GHz 2.29 GHz processors with 128 GB RAM.

Conclusions

This paper addresses the AQCSP for the automated container terminal. The operation process of AQCSP is decomposed, and a mixed integrated programming model is formulated. In the numerical experiments, the relation between operation efficiency and energy consumption has been quantitative analyzed, as well as the sensitivity analysis of ratio parameters for all tasks for a vessel bay and for the tasks in each stack is also presented. In the future, finding an effective solution to solve the

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This work is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 72072112, 71602114, 72002125, 72001135], Shanghai Rising-Star Program [grant number 19QA1404200], Shanghai Sailing Program [grant numbers 19YF1418800, 20YF1416600] and Shanghai Science & Technology Committee Research Project [grant number 17040501700].

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Citation Excerpt :
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Quay crane scheduling in automated container terminal for the trade-off between operation efficiency and energy consumption

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Related works

Scheduling for automated quay crane

Assumptions

Numerical experiments

Conclusions

Declaration of Competing Interest

Acknowledgement

Eur. J. Oper. Res.

Eur. J. Oper. Res.

Transp. Res. Part B: Methodological

Transp. Res. Part B: Methodol.

Adv. Eng. Inf.

Eur. J. Oper. Res.

Transp. Res. Part E Logistics & Transp. Rev.

Adv. Eng. Inf.

Comput. Ind. Eng.

Comput. Ind. Eng.

Transp. Res. Part E: Logistics & Transp. Rev.

Transp. Res. Part B

Transp. Res. Part B

Bi-objective optimization for integrating quay crane and internal truck assignment with challenges of trucks sharing

Knowl.-Based Syst.