Layout analysis affecting strategic decisions in artificial container terminals
Introduction
A significant share of world trade is conducted via ships and international maritime trade volume is increasing rapidly. In spite of the global economic crises over last two decades, world trade volume has increased in recent years and the share of containerized trade has grown accordingly. Due to innovations in the maritime industry, ships have increased speed and capacity to make transport operations more efficient. As such, intermodal freight transportation has become an important area of focus. Connecting land, sea and air transportation allows for gate to gate freight transportation which increasingly relies on container transportation. For these reasons, it is more important than ever to improve efficiencies in the global supply chain’s container transport operations.
A review of scientific literature on the issue reveals that automation applications are generally conducted for large-scale seaport terminals. These large-scale seaports tend to be built on coasts where the sea is deep, named natural ports. Container terminals located on natural seaports generally have a single major berth running parallel to the coastline and storage yards are located horizontally or vertically to the major berth. Terminals in shallow seas are built artificially near the coastlines. These artificial terminals have more than one berth and low depth in comparison to natural ports. The most common layouts found in artificial container terminals are constructed in Π, L, π, or Ψ formats. Container terminals with more than one berth can have more than one storage yard for the terminal or cause to build storage yards that are perpendicular or parallel to the major berth.
In order to minimize waiting times of vessels in container terminals, speed is imperative, especially when transitioning containers among the berths, the internal transport areas, and the storage yards. Berth allocation, terminal equipment selection, vehicle routing, scheduling, and storage yard layout problems need to be solved in order to manage container terminal operations effectively. Today’s challenging competitive environment requires more efficient management of terminal operations. In response to these challenges, terminal managers are increasingly depending on developing technology for automatic control technology based equipment, which is practical given the repetitive nature of terminal operations. Such technologies include automated guided vehicles (AGVs), automatic lifting vehicles (ALVs), and automated stacking cranes (ASCs).
In this paper, automated container terminals located in feeder ports are investigated to identify the most common layout formats. The effect of layout on terminal performance is analyzed using different simulation models. It also attempts to improve the performance of terminals by using different allocation strategies under the optimum dispatching rule. Total container handling amount per year in quay cranes is used as the major performance criterion.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: in the next section, relevant literature is reviewed, followed by a detailed description of the container terminals and essential terminal operations in Section 3. Section 4 presents configuration of the designed container terminals and a detailed description of transporter dispatching rules and allocation strategies. The main features of the developed simulation models and the generation of input and output data are explained in Section 5 and the results of the simulation tests and statistical analysis are discussed in Section 6. The paper concludes with a summary of research conclusions and suggestions for further research.
Section snippets
Literature review
The planning and controlling of seaport container terminal operations has become a trendy subject in international academic research, evident by the many papers published on such topics as berth allocation, storage yard planning and routing, terminal equipment selection, scheduling, performance evaluation with simulation, and terminal layout. A comprehensive literature review covering a variety of decision problems related to container terminals was published by Vis and de Koster (2003). In
Container terminals
Containers enter and leave the terminal by different means of transport, such as trucks, trains, and ships. Seaport container terminals provide an interface between maritime and on-land transportation systems and, thus, represent a critical link in the inter-modal transportation chain. Three basic handling directions can be distinguished. Export containers arrive at the terminal usually by train or truck and are stored in the terminal yard before they are loaded onto a container vessel for
Configurations of the designed container terminals
As mentioned before, the aim of this research is to investigate the effects of various types of container terminals in feeder ports under different transporter dispatching rules and allocation strategies. Therefore, the structure of artificial container terminals, transporter dispatching rules and allocation strategies are explained in detail in this section.
Simulation model of the container terminal
In order to analyze the effects of layout formats under different transporter dispatching rules and allocation strategies, simulation models have been developed for the designed container terminals. The reason is that the simulation mimics all operations in a container terminal completely and evaluates the performance of the system under different scenarios and operation conditions. While Section 5.1 explains the main features of the simulation model, the generation of input and output data is
Numerical experimentation
In order to analyze the performance of the designed terminal configurations, simulation tests are performed with the aim to demonstrate the effect of layout formats. In Section 6.1, the impact of the transporter dispatching rules is presented with three different scenarios and the results obtained from these scenarios are discussed. Descriptions of the scenarios implemented within the context of the study are presented in Table 2. The first scenario focuses on transporter request rules under
Conclusion
In this paper, research for the most commonly used layout formats such as Π, L, π and Ψ in artificial container terminals was carried out using simulation models developed for each layout format. In these terminals, the effect of layout on terminal performance has been examined under different transporter dispatching rules and resource allocation strategies.
Results show that layout format in artificial container terminals has a significant effect on terminal operations performance. Considering
Acknowledgement
This work was completely supported by the Department of Scientific Research Projects, PAU under the project number 2010FBE033.
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