engleski

A Case Study for Improving Modeling and Simulation of Container Terminals

Container terminals are trying to expand capacity and increase performance at a minimum of investments. Often the container terminal operations are changing to meet increased customer demands as well as to adapt to new technologies. So, the management of a container terminal is a complex process that involves a vast number of decisions. Among the problems to be solved, there are the spatial allocation of containers on the terminal yard, allocation of ships to berths and cranes, scheduling berthing priorities and the scheduling of operations in order to maximize a performance function based on some economic indicators. This is evidently not an exhaustive list and, generally, these problems are solved using techniques from optimization, like job-shop scheduling, genetic algorithms or mixed-integer linear programming. At the terminal, the same problems are usually solved by the terminal manager, only using his/her experience. On the other hand, the crucial terminal management problem is optimizing the balance between the ship-owners who request quick service of their ships and economical use of allocated resources. Since both container ships and container port facilities are very expensive, it is desirable to optimize their performance, taking better management decisions. Solving these problems and operations are nowadays unthinkable without use appropriate optimization methods. The paper outlines the integration a flexible simulator which represents the marine-side operations of a container terminal with a genetic algorithm for improving container terminal management polices. Also, some research directions in maritime education process are proposed towards the application of simulation and optimization tools and techniques to the problem of container terminal management.

transportation; container terminal; simulation; optimization; berth menagment

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