Container Assignment and Yard Crane Deployment in a Container Terminal: A Case Study

Vessels and seaports are an essential part of world trade and economy. Due to soaring competition between container terminals and pressure from shipping lines to shorten the vessel port stay, operations research techniques are continuously being developed to enhance terminal performance and efficiency. However, many of these studies only focus on a single area of the terminal operations, such as vehicle routing or berth planning. Although optimizing the performance of each individual operation is fundamental to overall terminal efficiency, the interrelations between the various decisions should also be examined in detail as a decision taken in one area at an early stage may have a significant impact on downstream operations. The aim of this paper is to develop a unified approach within which the container assignment and yard crane deployment problems arising within a given planning time horizon are considered simultaneously. The authors develop a new mathematical formulation of the combined problem in order to find optimal container flows through the yard that minimize overall storage and handling costs. The paper presents a description of the proposed modeling approach and a practical application for the Port of Felixstowe. Preliminary computational results are reported.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/14792931
• Authors:
  • Laik, Nang
  • Hadjiconstantnou, Eleni
• Publication Date: 2008-3

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 90-107
• Serial:
  • Maritime Economics & Logistics
  • Volume: 10
  • Issue Number: 1
  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
  • ISSN: 1388-1973
  • EISSN: 1476-0592
  • Serial URL: http://link.springer.com/journal/41278

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Competition; Container terminals; Economic efficiency; Logistics; Optimization
• Uncontrolled Terms: Container assignment; Time horizons; Yard crane deployment
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Marine Transportation; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01091408
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Apr 23 2008 9:23AM