Performance analysis of berth configurations at container terminals

Abstract

The containerized trade market has been growing rapidly since its introduction. The capacity of ships and the amount of containers being transshipped at container terminals increases significantly. Terminals should handle their operations efficiently to provide the necessary capacity and customer service. In designing a container terminal, terminal management has to consider the choice for a certain type of berth. In this paper, we compare by means of a simulation study the performance of traditional one-sided marginal berths and indented berths. An indented berth enables quay cranes to unload and load containers from both sides of the ship. As a result, more quay cranes can work on a single ship. As main performance measure in this comparison we use the total vessel operation time required to unload and load a ship. This time depends next to crane productivity also on the efficiency of the transportation and storage and retrieval processes in the terminal. We have performed a sensitivity analysis in which we also study the relation between the selection of an indented berth and other design and control issues in the terminal.

Managing supply chain uncertainty by building flexibility in container port capacity: a logistics triad perspective and the COVID-19 case

“…The storage yard in terminals at most ports is divided according to the direction of containers passing through that terminal, namely transshipment, imports, and exports (Alessandri et al 2009;Nishimura et al 2009;Vis and van Anholt 2010). At some terminals, additional divisions are added for empty containers and special containers, such as dangerous goods, oversize containers, and reefers that need power supply.…”

Determining crane areas for balancing workload among interfering and noninterfering cranes

“…Regarding the performance of the heuristics, the simple MSP, while extremely quick, creates highly suboptimal solutions. This is especially significant seeing that it is rare to find more sophisticated scheduling algorithms in practice (see [11]). The BS, while also extremely fast, already delivers far superior solutions.…”

“…In the case of containerships, the workload w s could also be interpreted as the number of containers in bay s , which is probably a good indicator of the required time and may, for practical purposes, be easier to ascertain than the exact (un‐)loading time. In [11], real‐world data from the port of Amsterdam is analyzed. It is distinguished between ships with a “large workload,” averaging 2050 container moves spread out over 17 bays, and a “small workload,” averaging 881 moves over 15 bays.…”

Optimally scheduling interfering and non‐interfering cranes

“…Some container ports have implemented indented berths as discussed above. For instance, the port of Amsterdam has introduced such a berth in 2001 (Vis & van Anholt, ). So far, there are few papers dealing with crane scheduling at indented berths.…”