Planning And Scheduling For Maritime Container Yards

Maximizing reader insights into the challenges facing maritime supply chains and container port logistics service providers in Asia, this book highlights their innovative responses to these challenges through real-world case studies. With a focus on mathematical modeling, simulation and heuristics approaches, this book provides academics, engineers, container terminal operators, students in logistics and supply chain management with the latest approaches that can be used to address the planning and scheduling problem in large container terminal yards. This book can be used on a self-contained basis as teaching cases in an undergraduate or specialist class setting, or on techniques applied to maritime container operations for port operations.

1. 1 Motivation and Scope of Research Container terminals in seaports constitute interfaces between sea and land tra- port of goods in global transport chains. These logistics facilities face an increasing demandof service capacity,as is re ected by a tremendousgrowthin the worldwide container transshipments per year. For example, the top 20 terminals in the world showed an average relative increase of 14% with respect to the number of handled container units from 2006 to 2007, see Port of Hamburg Marketing (2008). In spite of this development, competition is high among container terminals within the same region. A terminal’s customers, rst and foremost the vessel op- ators, expect a high level of service quality where reliability is one of the most importantdimensions,seeWiegmansetal. (2001). Regardingtheserviceofavessel, reliability means to realize all transshipment operations within its projected service time interval. The reliability of terminal operations impacts the reliability of v- sels in meeting their liner schedules. According to Notteboom (2006) unexpected waiting times of vessels before berthing and unexpected low transshipment prod- tivity at terminals are responsible for about 86% of liner schedule disturbances, see Fig. 1. 1. Currently, many terminal operators counteract this situation by extending their transshipment capacities. They build new terminals or enlarge existing ter- nals and purchase new or upgrade existing equipment. Ilmer (2005) provides an overview of current projects for building terminal capacity in northern Europe.

Container Terminals (CT) operate as central nodes in worldwide hub-and-spoke networks and link ocean-going vessels with smaller feeder vessels as well as with inbound and outbound hinterland transportation systems using road, rail, or inland waterways. The volume of transcontinental container flows has gained appreciably over the last five decades -- throughput figures of CT reached new records, frequently with double-digit annual growth rates. Stimulated by throughput requirements and stronger competition between terminals settled in the same region or serving a similar hinterland, respectively, cost efficiency and throughput capabilities become more and more important. Nowadays, both terminal capacity and costs have to be regarded as key indicators for CT competitiveness. In respect of this steady growth, this handbook focuses on planning activities being aimed at “order of magnitude improvements” in terminal performance and economic viability. On the one hand the book is intended to provide readership with technological and organizational CT basics for strategic planning. On the other hand this book offers methodical assistance for fundamental dimensioning of CT in terms of 'technique', 'organization' or 'man'. The former primarily considers comprehensive information about container handling technologies representing the state of the art for present terminal operations, while the latter refers to methodological support comprising in particular quantitative solutions and modeling techniques for strategic terminal decisions as well as straightforward design guidelines. The handbook includes an introductory contribution which gives an overview of strategic planning problems at CT and introduces the contributions of the volume with regard to their relationship in this field. Moreover, each paper contains a section or paragraph that describes the impact of findings investigated by the author(s) for problem-solving in long-term planning of CT (as an application domain). The handbook intends to provide solutions and insights that are valuable for both practitioners in industry who need effective planning approaches to overcome problems and weaknesses in terminal design/development and researchers who would like to inform themselves about the state of the art in methodology of strategic terminal planning or be inspired by new ideas. That is to say, the handbook is addressed to terminal planners in practice as well as to students of maritime courses of study and (application oriented) researchers in the maritime field.

Written by a collection of eminent figures in the field, this new edition continues to look at the rational planning for port facilities requirements (berths, storage and cargo handling equipment), organisations, management and operations with relation to planning and design of ports and marine terminals.

This book presents new insights and successful solutions to the operational problems of automated container terminals and cargo systems. It comprises reports on the state of the art, applications of quantitative methods, as well as case studies and simulation results. Its contributions are written by leading experts from academia and business and address practitioners and researchers in logistics, transportation, and management.

Seaport Container Terminals (SCT) operate as central nodes in worldwide hub-and-spoke networks, and link ocean-going vessels with smaller feeder vessels, as well as with inbound and outbound hinterland transportation systems using road, rail, or inland waterways. The volume of transcontinental container flows has gained enormously over the last five decades frequently leading to double-digit annual growth rates for the SCT. The 2nd edition of the Handbook of Terminal Planning also deals with problems being induced by questions of terminal development on a long-term basis (strategic level). Facing present and upcoming challenges for SCT operation—such as more and more mega vessels, extremely high hinterland peaks, higher environmental standards, less public acceptance and the stronger competition between terminals serving the same hinterland—the focus of the book is on successful approaches and solutions primarily addressing the planning of terminal structures. Nevertheless, operational aspects are considered, as well as how they effectively contribute to problem solving on the strategic level.

Liner Ship Fleet Planning: Models and Algorithms systematically introduces the latest research on modeling and optimization for liner ship fleet planning with demand uncertainty. Container shipping companies have struggled since the financial crisis of 2007-2008, making it critical for them to make informed decisions about their fleet planning and development. Current and future shipping professionals require systematic approaches for investigating and solving their fleet planning problems, as well as methodologies for addressing their other shipping responsibilities. Liner Ship Fleet Planning addresses these needs, providing the most recent quantitative research of liner shipping in maritime transportation. The research and methods provided assist those tasked with optimizing shipping efficiency and fleet deployment in the face of uncertain demand. Suitable for those with any level of quantitative background, the book serves as a valuable resource for both maritime academics, and shipping professionals involved in planning and scheduling departments. Introduces the latest research on maritime transportation problems Analyzes problems of liner ship fleet planning, taking uncertainty into account Promotes the use of mathematics to manage uncertainty, using stochastic programming models, and proposing solution algorithms to solve proposed models Includes case studies that provide detailed examples of real-world examples of fleet optimization Explains how stochastic programming modeling methods and solution algorithms can be applied to other research fields featuring uncertainty, such as container yard planning, berth allocation and vehicle deployment problems

This dissertation, "Scheduling the Landside Operations of a Container Terminal Using a Fuzzy Heuristic" by Ya, Ge, 戈亞, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: ABSTRACT Abstract of thesis entitled Scheduling the Landside Operations of a Container Terminal Using a Fuzzy Heuristic Submitted by Ge Ya For the Degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in August 2006 Modern container terminals in a globally competitive market must constantly respond to high expectations from their customers. At the same time, intensive capital investment in terminal resources requires high productivity to reduce unit operational costs. Facing pressure from both competitors and customers, container terminals need to develop effective ways of planning their operations in order to strike an optimum balance between better customer service and higher terminal productivity. Trucks and yard cranes are the most commonly used types of landside equipment for handling containers at port container terminals. This study aims at developing an effective and efficient method for scheduling their operations to support the discharging and loading of containers at the quayside. In particular, it considers how to minimize vessel tardiness (a common customer service performance measure) and how to maximize the quay crane handling rate (a typical measure of a container iterminal's productivity). Unlike most previous studies, this study considers the interaction between the operations of trucks and yard cranes. A schedule that takes this interaction into consideration can optimize the overall performance of the terminal instead of just the performance of a limited sphere of operations performed by a single equipment type. In order to react to various changes and random events occurring in the dynamic operating environment, the real-time formulation of schedules is required. It is noted that finding the optimal solution to the scheduling problem is computationally intractable. This study proposes a fuzzy heuristic for solving the scheduling problem. The heuristic comprises two key scheduling schemes (Fuzzy 1 and Fuzzy 2) to solve the scheduling problem for each type of landside equipment. The two scheduling schemes are applied to determine the priorities of all possible jobs for a scheduled equipment type by considering a set of operational factors crucial to the terminal performance. The technique of fuzzy-logic is used to construct the implementation function for the scheduling schemes and to model the trade-off among the factors considered. The weighting coefficients employed in each scheme are treated as a user input and can be determined based on scheduling objectives or customers' needs. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy heuristic, an extensive simulation experiment is conducted to compare the performance of the fuzzy heuristic with that of 4 priority-based scheduling rules. The simulation results show that the fuzzy heuristic outperforms the four scheduling rules on both performance measures and can generate effective schedules in a very short time. (403 words) ii DOI: 10.5353/th_b3782552 Subjects: Fuzzy logic Production scheduling - Mathematical models Container terminals - Management