Levelling crane workload in multi-yard rail-road container terminals
Publication date
2021-01-05
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Organisational unit
Universität Hamburg, Institut für Operations Management
Scopus ID
Publisher
Elsevier
Series or journal
European Journal of Operational Research
ISSN
Periodical volume
293
Periodical issue
3
First page
941
Last page
954
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
Nein
Language
English
Keyword
Complexity analysis
Rail-road container terminal
Scheduling
Simulated annealing
Abstract
In modern rail-road container terminals, container transshipment between trains and trucks is carried out by large gantry cranes that span over rail tracks and road lanes. Prior optimization approaches have mainly focused on the short-term scheduling of these crucial transshipment resources. In this work, we focus on a midterm planning level that assigns inbound trains to yard tracks such that trains can be serviced by yard resources on schedule. This planning task is especially crucial in larger terminal settings which comprise more than a single yard, which is increasingly typical in growing intermodal networks. We describe the planning situation we encountered at a large rail-road terminal in Germany and propose a mixed-integer model formulation that captures the core of the decision problem. Further, we carry out a complexity analysis of problem variants and develop a heuristic solution procedure in a simulated annealing framework based on these structural insights. The approach is tested in a comprehensive computational study which demonstrates the viability of the approach to solve instances of real-world size.
Version
Published version
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Metadata only access