An optimisation algorithm for container loading and unloading operations at maritime terminals

Optimisation of container loading and unloading operations at maritime terminals has increasingly become more important to terminal operators. This paper presents the optimisation algorithm (OA) for solving the hybrid flowshop scheduling problem for container terminal loading and unloading operations. The OA which composed of seven heuristics and genetic algorithm (GA) is used to estimate the minimum makespan for a number of problem instances. A lower bound is also developed to measure the effectiveness of the proposed optimisation procedure. Computational experiments reveal the efficiency of the OA.