Barge rotation planning and quay scheduling in the port of Rotterdam

We consider the problem how to align barge rotations with quay schedules of terminals in the port of Rotterdam. Every time a barge visits the port, it has to make a rotation along, on average, eight terminals to load and unload containers. A central solution, e.g., a trusted party that coordinates the activities of all barges and terminals, is not feasible for several reasons. One of the reasons is that barges and terminals want to stay autonomous and in control of their own operations. We propose a multi-agent based approach of the problem, since a multi-agent system can mirror to a large extent the way the business network is currently organized and can provide a solution that is acceptable by each of the parties involved. We examine the value of exchanging different levels of information and evaluate the performance by means of simulation. We compare the results with an off-line scheduling algorithm. The results indicate that a multi agent based control is promising for this problem.