Research On Equipment Configuration And Scheduling Strategy In Container Terminal

An effective way of getting advantage in the competition among container terminals is optimizing the configuration and scheduling of terminals'resources. The turnaround time of container ships and the throughput of container terminals depend on the efficiency of quay cranes, while reasonable configuration and scheduling of yard handling machines and horizontal transport machines directly affects the efficiency of quay cranes. During the operating process of terminals, operators often rely on their experiences to configure, dispatch and route the handling facilities, and the research on terminals' operation management which involve new equipments such as dual-trolley quay crane and twin 40-ft quay crane is rare. Therefore, this thesis studies the configuration and scheduling strategies of equipments in container terminal on the basis of integrating relevant scheduling optimization theories and technologies and considering the working characteristics of new type quay cranes. The main contents and results are as follows.(1)Aiming at the configuration of quay crane, rubber-tyred gantry crane (RTG) and container truck, it is divided into two phases to build multi-objective mixed integer programming models of RTGs and container trucks adopting the dual-cycle dispatching mode. An improved multi-objective genetic algorithm is designed to solving the two models. The viability and effectiveness of the models and algorithm are tested by several examples.(2)A simulation optimization method of equipment configuration in container terminal is presented. Queuing network model is used to qualitative describe the operation process of container terminal. Computer simulation is used to obtain the system's statistics performances. Many factors affecting the schemes of equipment configuration are analyzed, such as quay crane's working efficiency, RTG's working efficiency, container's stacking location distribution, ratio of handling two 40-ft containers simultaneously for twin 40-ft quay crane, balanced degree of import and export container, and so on. Introducing experimental design method, the optimized quantities of RTGs and container trucks at different levels of factors are obtained. Quantitative research on the relevance of these factors and the quantities of RTGs and container trucks is carried on through regression analysis.(3)Multi-objective mixed integer programming models to dispatch RTGs among different yard blocks is build and a new heuristic algorithm based on network flow is designed. Routing optimization of one RTG taking charge of container handling in one block is deliberated according to container's stacking plan and quay crane's working plan. An integer programming model aiming at minimizing RTGs'moving time is build and an algorithm applying enumeration method, table dispatching method and dynamic programming is proposed, which can reach the global optimum.(4)A dual-cycle container truck dispatching model is established, which utilizes rolling scheduling method and takes the working characteristics of new type quay cranes into consider. An improved genetic algorithm and a heuristic algorithm based on weighted sum of time and distance are designed, in which the improved genetic algorithm has better solution quality and efficiency. Because of the randomness and fuzziness of container truck's dynamic scheduling information, reinforcement learning method is used to solve the dispatching problem of container trucks. A reinforcement learning model based on Q-learning was designed. The Q-function was generalized and approximated using the cerebella-model-articulation-controller (CMAC) neuron network. Simulation results showed that Q-learning algorithm could optimize the truck scheduling strategies efficiently.Many methods, such as multi-objective decision theory, claddical algorithms, genetic algorithm, heuristic algorithm, computer simulation and reinforcement learning, are applied in the research on scheduling optimization in container terminal. Using the methods and results in this thesis and mass data in the production database, scheduling schemes are created to provide scientific approaches for decision-making in container terminal. This thesis has particular theoretical significance and practical application value for the research on production scheduling optimization in container terminal.