Delft University of Technology
Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering
Transport Technology / Logistic Engineering



W. van der Sluis De planning van kranen op een containerterminal.
Literature survey, Report 2001.LT.5471, Transport Technology, Logistic Engineering.


Ninety percent of the international transport nowadays visits mainports. The general cargo shipped is for over eighty percent containerized. Because a containership is highly capitalized and their operation costs are very high, it is very important that the turn-around time of a container ship in a port container terminal is as short as possible. That is why the loading and unloading operations have to be planned very well.
The subject of this paper is a survey of research on scheduling of terminal operations where cranes are involved. The overall goal is to minimize the time spent in port by the container ship. The scheduling of terminal operations is divided into two subproblems.
The first subproblem is the scheduling of the quay crane. The methods for the scheduling of the loading and unloading operations are described. The scheduling problem is divided in static and dynamic scheduling problem. In the static version all the ships are at the starting point located in the port, where in the dynamic problem ships can still arrive while the loading or unloading is started.
The second subproblem is the scheduling of the cranes operating in the stack. There are two different cranes differentiated for the stack operations. The first one is the transfer crane and the second is the straddle carrier. For both cranes the scheduling problem has been investigated on two different parts. The optimal configuration of containers in a stack is one part, while the other part describes the optimal route through the stack.


Reports on Logistic Engineering (in Dutch)
Modified: 2001.05.07; logistics@3mE.tudelft.nl , TU Delft / 3mE / TT / LT.