ABSTRACT
This book was devoted to solution methods for the static and dynamic scheduling problem of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in the container terminals. A special case of the minimum cost flow (MCF) model was defined and presented for the problem. Then, we studied the effectiveness and efficiency of the network simplex algorithm (NSA) in the literature. We proposed three new versions of the algorithm: network simplex plus algorithm (NSA+), dynamic NSA (DNSA), and dynamic network simplex plus algorithm (DNSA+). NSA, NSA+, DNSA, and DNSA+ are complete algorithms. They were designed to find optimal solutions. To complement the solutions, greedy vehicle search (GVS) method was designed and implemented. GVS is an incomplete algorithm, which can be used for reactive scheduling or when the problem is too big for the complete algorithms. In this final chapter, we summarize the research conducted on NSA, NSA+, DNSA, DNSA+, and GVS and also discuss the prospects of future research on the subject.
