2024 Asian Conference on Communication and Networks (ASIANComNet 2024)

Ports that handle container ships play a vital role in facilitating global logistics and supply chain operations. These ports offer essential services for managing container vessels. When a container ship arrives at a port, it typically needs the support of tugboats to assist with critical maneuvers. These maneuvers include docking the ship at its berth, repositioning or shifting the vessel within the port area, and undocking or departing from the berth. The tugboat operations are crucial for ensuring the safe and efficient movement of these large container ships during their time at the port. Effective scheduling of tugboats to serve vessels is essential to ensure the safe and efficient movement of container vessels in a port. This research discusses the problem of tugboat scheduling or Tugboat Scheduling Problem (Tug-SP). This study focusses on reviewing literature aiming to identify variables for optimizing tugboat operations, this study also proposed horsepower capacity constraint application to the model application for future research. Proposing future research could also focus on studying more dynamic problems, solving larger and complicated cases, designing a more efficient solution method, using appropriate and developed algorithms. Apart from that, other factors such as the uncertainty such as ship arrival times or under certain situation can also be considered to be included in the consideration variables in minimizing total tugboat services time or to reduce operations cost, especially for large and busy container ports.