A B S T R A C TNowadays, there is much attention for planning of container terminals in the global trade centers. The high cost of quay cranes motivates both scholars and industrial practitioners especially in the last decade to develop novel optimization models to address this dilemma. This study proposes a coordinated optimization model to cover both Quay Crane Scheduling Problem (QCSP) and Quay Crane Assignment Problem (QCAP) as among the first attempts in this area. Another main contribution of this paper is to apply a recent nature-inspired algorithm called Red Deer Algorithm (RDA). The RDA revealed its performance for a variety of combinatorial optimization problems in different real-world applications. This is the first attempt in the literature to employ this recent metaheuristic to solve the proposed Coordinated Quay Crane Scheduling and Assignment Problem (CQCSAP). Finally, an extensive comparison discussion is considered to reveal the main benefits of the proposed optimization model and solution algorithm.