Simulation-based Analysis of Dispatching Methods on Seaport Container Terminals

Abstract

Horizontal transport on a container terminal is the interface between quayside and yard. Efficient transport operations between these two areas are an important issue for terminal operators to achieve a high terminal performance. Thereby, an essential task is to dispatch the respective vehicles to pending container transport orders. Despite the large amount of literature in this field, there is no systematic approach investigating the effects of terminal parameters on the performance of dispatching methods. This discrete event simulation study aims to close that research gap for the case of different dynamic dispatching methods. It shows that the performance of a dispatching method depends highly on the terminal's objectives (e.g. maximizing crane productivity, minimizing driven distances). In addition, it reveals that some terminal parameters influence the performance ranking of the dispatching methods. This implies that there is no dominant dispatching method; the choice should rather depend on the specific terminal objectives and parameters.