Maximizing the reliability of terminal service by vessel scheduling and quay crane assignment

Competition among container terminals is known to be rigorous. To differentiate from each others, terminals are required to provide higher service level, higher reliability, and lower cost to their customers. To achieve that, they continuously seek for methodology that aims to optimize the utilization of resources and particularly reduce the vessel rejection rate. A high rejection rate not only induces higher operation costs but also loss the customer loyalty. Since a vessel is traveling from one terminal to the other terminals for loading and discharging of containers, delay should be avoided. In this connection, a robust berth allocation planning for a terminal is required. In this study, a two levels Genetic Algorithm (GA) is proposed to minimize the rejection rate taking into account the quay crane assignment simultaneously.