Scheduling mechanisms for rail mounted gantries with respect to crane interdependencies

轨道式集装箱门架是港口集装箱码头堆垛集装箱的一种较新的装卸设备。因此，轨道安装龙门的调度方法是稀缺的。大多数现有的方法都没有考虑到在每个集装箱块有多个龙门架的情况下，这些龙门架不能相互独立地移动或操作。解决这个问题的方法通常是将不同的区域分配给门架。大多数龙门架只能在指定区域内操作。显然，这大大降低了灵活性。因此，有必要开发一种机制，允许在不受区域限制的情况下对龙门进行调度，并集成决策过程中可能发生也可能不发生的依赖关系。这在现有文献中确实很少发生。特别是对于子问题，没有多项式算法被开发出来，也没有证明它们是不存在的。这个项目的目标是缩小这一研究差距。我们将采用自下而上的方法。首先，我们考虑子问题，并开发有效的求解方法。我们一步一步地考虑更综合的调度问题，使用为子问题开发的方法作为构建块。最后提出了一种考虑起重机相互依赖的轨道式龙门综合调度方法。特别是，我们的目标是考虑运输设备将集装箱交给轨道安装的龙门架或从他们那里接收集装箱是相互竞争的（每个卡车司机都希望首先得到服务）。在我们的调度方法机制应整合，允许以公平的方式解决这个问题。所使用的方法包括线性、整数和混合整数规划、应用计算机科学（例如图论）、调度理论、博弈论和计算复杂性理论等领域的技术。

Rail mounted gantries are a relatively new device for handling containers in stacks in a port container terminal. Consequently, scheduling approaches for rail mounted gantries are scarce. Most of existing approaches do not consider that in settings with multiple gantries per container block these gantries cannot move or operate independent from each other. This issue is resolved often by assigning disctinct areas to gantries. Mostly gantries then are restricted to operate in the assigned area only. Obviously, this reduces flexibility significantly. Therefore, it is necessary to develop mechanisms which allow to schedule gantries without restriction to areas and integrate dependencies which may or may not occur depending on the schedule in the decision process. This does happen in existing literature only very rarely. In particular no polynomial algorithms have been developed for subproblems nor have they been proven to be non-existent.The goal of this project is to close this research gap. We will follow a bottom-up approach. First, we consider subproblems and develop efficient solution methods for them. Step by step we consider more integrated scheduling problems using the approaches developed for subproblems so far as building blocks. The final outcome is a method for integrated scheduling of rail mounted gantries considering crane inter-dependencies. In particular we aim at considering that transport devices handing over containers to rail mounted gantries or receiving containers from them are in competition with each other (each truck driver desires to be served first). In our scheduling approach mechanisms shall be integrated which allow to resolve this issue in a fair manner.The methodology used encompasses techniques from the fields of linear, integer, and mixed-integer programming, applied computer science (graph theory, e.g.), scheduling theorie, game theorie and computational complexity theory.