Simultaneous optimisation of seaside operations in container terminals: a case study of the Iranian Rajaee port

In marine transport, there is a growing need for optimisation surveys, which are aimed at increasing the efficiency of the whole process. In this study, the berth allocation problem, the quay crane assignment problem and the quay crane scheduling problem are simultaneously formulated into an integrated mathematical model. Afterwards, the proposed mixed integer mathematical model is coded via GAMS IDE/CPLEX software. The exact solver appears to need a huge amount of time to find the optimum solution, even for small and medium-sized problems. Hence, artificial intelligence, which is embedded in both imperialist competitive and genetic algorithms, is employed through a highly modified meta-heuristic method. This method is called a 'hybrid imperialist competitive and genetic algorithm' (HICGA) and is designed to deal with the complexity of such problems. To check the validity of the proposed model and the performance of the designed HICGA method, historical data for 24 weeks from the Iranian Rajaee port were provided.