Navigation channels are fairways for vessels to travel in and out of the terminal basin of a container port. The capacity of a navigation channel is restricted by the number of traffic lanes and safety clearance of vessels, and the availability of a navigation channel is usually affected by...

Machine scheduling problem has been extensively studied by researchers for many decades in view of its numerous applications on solving practical problems. Due to the complexity of this class of scheduling problems, various approximation solution approaches have been presented in the literature....