Evaluation of operational plans in container terminal yards using Discrete-Event Simulation

• Main Authors: MA, Nang Laik, Hadjiconstantinou, Eleni
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2008
• Subjects: sea transport; optimization; simulation; decision support systems; Computer Sciences; Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering; Transportation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/759; http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/ori.2008.16
• Institution: Singapore Management University

As the world container volumes are soaring, container terminals form a very important chain in the global transportation network. It is a generally accepted view that the modelling of the dynamic and stochastic nature of the container terminal systems using analytical or closed form models is a complicated process and the use of such models is very limited. Hence, this paper presents a simulation model for complete terminal operations which is developed and implemented with the view to validate/evaluate the operational results obtained from a new optimization model of the combined container assignment and yard crane deployment problem. The various aspects of the container terminal operations are modelled using discrete-event simulation. Computational results from the simulation model are reported for a UK container terminal using operational data.