Controls: Emulation to improve the performance of container terminals

Abstract

Nowadays container terminals are struggling with a continuously increasing volume. Therefore, they are searching for solutions to increase throughput capacity without expanding their physical footprint. Furthermore, they aim to increase their productivity on vessels in order to be able to handle bigger ships with larger call sizes in the same time frame. A terminal operating system (TOS) plays a major role in today's terminal operations as it supports planning, scheduling and equipment control. Recently more and more tasks are performed by the TOS -stowage planning, grounding decisions, equipment dispatchingand therefore, they need to be well-tuned to the operation, which remains a terminal specific characteristic. In this paper, an approach is presented to test and tweak the TOS and train operators on a virtual terminal. The implementation of this approach has been successfully applied during several TOS update or replacement projects for Rotterdam,

Plan validation for container terminals

“…Secondly, we compare the simulated TOS with the real TOS, both working against the same simulation model. Furthermore, the model originates from running in 'emulation mode' (see figure 1), where it is coupled to the real TOS for fine tuning purposes (Boer andSaanen 2008, Boer andSaanen 2012a). As the real TOS does not allow for fast evaluation -in previous papers we reported a maximum speed of 3x real-time -we propose another approach to evaluate a plan in a feasible (operational) timeframe.…”

“…At TBA we developed a product, called CONTROLS (CONtainer TeRminal Optimised Logistics Simulation) that supports the creation of simulation models of container terminals (Boer and Saanen 2008). The simulation models created by using CONTROLS are full representations of all relevant elements and processes at the terminal, for example the lay-out (yard, rail terminal and quay cranes), models of the equipment (kinematics, driver behavior, routing, disturbances and availability) and performance measurement functionalities.…”

“…Scenario a) presents the real terminal operation where a real terminal interacts with a real terminal operating system. In scenario b) an emulation is represented where a real terminal operating system interacts with a virtual container terminal, CONTROLS in this case (Boer and Saanen 2008). Scenario c) presents a situation where both the container terminal and the TOS are represented by their simulated model.…”

“…Although there are different mechanisms for time synchronization (Boer 2005), not all TOS systems provide this functionality. We achieved time synchronization with SPARCS (Boer and Saanen 2008). However, running faster than two to three times real time causes unexpected behavior of the TOS due to the heavy calculation needed for planning and scheduling, as well as fixed time loops in the code.…”

Web-based value stream oriented simulation of production control

“…In the operation phase it visualizes and optimizes complex processes to assist in management information systems and in decision making. Furthermore, virtual commissioning as emulation for the real system has become more important in the recent past (Boer 2008).…”