Stacker-reclaimer scheduling in a dry bulk terminal

A dry bulk terminal acts as a multi-modal interface for transhipping iron ores. Stacker-reclaimers are the dedicated equipments in storage yard for iron ore handling. Both unloading and loading processes are supported by stacker-reclaimers in most cases. The operation efficiency of dry terminals heavily depends on the productivity of stacker-reclaimers. This paper discusses the stacker-reclaimer scheduling problem with the objective of minimising the maximum completion time. The scheduling problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming model, and a lower bound for it is introduced. Using two types of chromosome representations and related operators, genetic algorithms are developed for solving the considered problem since it is NP-hard in nature. Computational experiments are carried out to compare and evaluate the performances of the proposed genetic algorithms. Computational results show that the one-string chromosome presentation with greedy assignment strategy performs better than the existing two-string chromosome presentation in the implementation of genetic algorithms.

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