Combination of a dynamic-hybrid berth allocation problem with a quay crane scheduling problem

Recently due to the increasing pressure to improve the efficiency of port operations, a great deal of research has been devoted to optimizing container terminal operations. Most papers deal with either the berth allocation problem or the crane scheduling problem. However only a limited number of papers deal with both, berth allocation and crane scheduling through either a combined model of the two problems, or two models with nested loops of each problem feeding into each other. In this paper, however, a mixed integer programming model is proposed for the integrated berth allocation and quay crane scheduling. Numerical experiments are conducted to test the performance of the proposed approach, using commercial software. The results illustrate that predefining both the berth allocation and crane scheduling before the vessel is processed results in improved time optimization.