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The lockmaster's problem

Author

Listed:
  • Ward Passchyn
  • Sofie Coene
  • Dirk Briskorn
  • Johann Hurink
  • Frits Spieksma
  • Greet Vanden Berghe

Abstract

Inland waterways form a natural network infrastructure with capacity for more traffic. Transportation by ship is widely promoted as it is a reliable, efficient and environmental friendly way of transport. Nevertheless, locks managing the water level on waterways and within harbours sometimes constitute bottlenecks for transportation over water. The lockmaster's problem concerns the optimal strategy for operating such a lock. In the lockmaster's problem we are given a lock, a set of upstream-bound ships and another set of ships travelling in the opposite direction. We are given the arrival times of the ships and a constant lockage time; the goal is to minimize total waiting time of the ships. In this paper, a dynamic programming algorithm is proposed that solves the lockmaster's problem in polynomial time. This algorithm can also be used to solve a single batching machine scheduling problem more efficiently than the current algorithms from the literature do. We extend the algorithm so that it can be applied in realistic settings, taking into account capacity, ship-dependent handling times, weights and water usage. In addition, we compare the performance of this new exact algorithm with the performance of some (straightforward) heuristics in a computational study.

Suggested Citation

  • Ward Passchyn & Sofie Coene & Dirk Briskorn & Johann Hurink & Frits Spieksma & Greet Vanden Berghe, 2015. "The lockmaster's problem," Working Papers of Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, Leuven 520009, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, Leuven.
    • Handle: RePEc:ete:kbiper:520009
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