Solving the single crane scheduling problem at rail transshipment yards

We consider single-crane scheduling at rail transshipment yards, in which gantry cranes move containers between trains, trucks and a storage area. The single-crane scheduling problem arises at single-crane transshipment terminals and as a subproblem of the multiple-crane scheduling problem. We consider a makespan objective function, which is equivalent to minimizing the train dwell time in the yard, and introduce time windows for container moves, for example, as a customer service promise. Our proposed decomposition algorithm with integrated dynamic branch-and-cut or dynamic programming solves practically relevant instances within short time limits. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.