Optimization in Handling Tasks in Monorail Transportation System at Busan Port

Abstract

This paper presents an optimal solution for handling tasks at Busan Container Port in South Korea. Currently, there is a monorail transportation system being constructed and supposed to be ready in use in 2045. It is a project in association with Korean Government that aims to increase the utility rate at Busan Port – one of the biggest container port in the world. At the moment, the main transport mean at Busan Port is truck – whose speed is about 40-50 km/h, however this traditional method leads to a low productivity and traffic congestions on the road. An innovation is to build a monorail system that could operates at high speed (about 80-90 km/h) along the entire port to transfer standardized containers. This new transportation system is expected to strongly reduce the delay in transporting as well as increase the overall efficiency for the system. In new system, there are transport vehicles called shuttles that would move on the rail in only one direction, and to turn back in the opposite way, there are some special stations called change stations that would direct the shuttles into the other lanes – which is similar to the lane driver systems on the railway. Containers at each inner terminal in Busan Port will be grabbed onto the shuttles by special equipments called loaders – a kind of giant automated manipulator that would load or unload whenever a shuttle requires. To optimize the operation, we introduce a heuristic algorithm called Greedy Algorithm for scheduling tasks and assigning tasks – two major actions in a cycle work that significantly affects to the system’s performance. First, the containers at each loader position will be sorted in a proper sequence, and then the sorted schedule will be assigned to proper shuttles in order to lower the total working time and delay time as much as possible. The overall performance is simulated by MATLAB software, including the result charts showing the main criteria points, in order to highlight the advantage of new transportation system.