Integration of Berth Allocation and Crane Assignment to Improve the Resource Utilization at a Seaport Container Terminal * Frank Meisel and Christian Bierwirth Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg frank.meisel@wiwi.uni-halle.de, christian.bierwirth@wiwi.uni-halle.de Abstract. This paper deals with the combination of two decision problems, which occur consecutively while planning the charge and discharge operati- ons of container ships in container terminals. The Berth Allocation Problem (BAP) considers the allocation of ships to berths in the course of time. The Crane Assignment Problem (CAP) addresses the assignment of quay cranes to ships. We provide a heuristic approach for the integrated solution of these problems and present computational results based on real world data. 1 Introduction As seaport terminals are often a bottleneck in the transport chain, the organi- zation and control of container handling processes receives increasing attenti- on. Terminal operations planning involves several tasks on the tactical as well as on the operational level [7, 8]. In this paper we concentrate on the quay side tasks in a container terminal (CT) by an investigation of the integration of the BAP and the CAP. It is organized as follows. In Section 2 we introdu- ce the optimization problems under consideration, their integration and the related objective function. Section 3 presents a solution method which has been adopted from heuristics for the resource constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). Finally, some computational results are presented. 2 Problem Description 2.1 Berth Allocation Problem A berth plan determines the quay positions and the berthing times for all container vessels which have to be served within a certain period. The BAP * published in Haasis, H.-D.; Kopfer, H.; Sch¨ onberger, J. (Eds.): Operations Research Proceedings 2005, Springer, Berlin et al., 2006, p.105-110