Development of Scheduling System to Optimize Ship Unloading-schedule

Abstract Japanese iron and steel industry imports large quantities of raw materials (iron ore and coal) by sea. Improvement of this raw materials logistics function is an important issue. For the purpose of resolving this issue, we have developed the optimal scheduling system for ship unloading-scheduling which is used in steel mills and can handle a full-scale operation. In this system, we proposed a new technique. This technique is that the problem is divided into long range decision layer and detailed operation decision layer, furthermore in each layer, entire term is divided into several terms, and then each term is optimized and simulated.