A Novel Benchmark Environment for Dynamic Factory Crane Scheduling

In dynamic warehouse operations, factory crane scheduling is a challenging problem to be solved. The interplay between a number of cranes requires good coordination to efficiently handle requested transport orders within the warehouse. The objective is to maximize the throughput and therefore minimize the makespan of crane schedules for a given set of transport orders and resulting crane moves. However, in real world processes, uncertainty is a key factor that needs to be considered. New transport orders arrive without prior announcement during the planning window, as the exact timing of vehicles responsible for inbound and outbound flows are often available only on short notice. Furthermore, events such as crane maintenance or operator breaks must be dealt with accordingly. To further the algorithmic research where these challenging events in the domain of dynamic factory crane scheduling must be tackled, we propose an open-source simulation model that serves as a novel benchmark.