A note on: A modified generalized extremal optimization algorithm for the quay crane scheduling problem with interference constraints

In a recent article, Guo, Cheng and Wang proposed a randomized search algorithm, called modified generalized extremal optimization (MGEO), to solve the quay crane scheduling problem for container groups under the assumption that schedules are unidirectional. The authors claim that the proposed algorithm is capable of finding new best solutions with respect to a well-known set of benchmark instances taken from the literature. However, as shown in this note, there are some errors in their work that can be detected by analysing the Gantt charts of two solutions provided by MGEO. In addition, some comments on the method used to evaluate the schedule corresponding to a task-to-quay crane assignment and on the search scheme of the proposed algorithm are provided. Finally, to assess the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, the computational experiments are repeated and additional computational experiments are provided.