Seaside Operations Planning in Container Terminals
Overview
Scope and Objectives
This research project comprises planning problems of seaport container terminals. Integrated solution approaches for combined problems are investigated. The objectives lie in an economic utilization of the quay crane resource and in the realization of a fast service for the vessels.
Short Description
The volume of containerized goods transported by ships shows a high yearly growth rate. Therefore, transshipment of containers within seaports is a logistic task of increasing importance. Vessel operators want to have their ships served in a fast way. Container terminal operators must provide the necessary load and unload capabilities. They have to plan the transshipment processes carefully, in order to ensure a high degree of service and an efficient resource utilization. This project especially considers two of the planning problems. The first one is to allocate vessels to quay space (Berth Allocation Problem). The second one is to assign quay cranes to berthed vessels (Crane Assignment Problem). Up to now practitioners and researchers treat both problems one by the other in a sequential manner. Only little research has been done on the interdependencies and the resulting need for more appropriate solution methods. An integrated solution approach has to consider the berth allocation as well as the simultaneous assignment of the scarce quay crane resource. This allows to aim at the service degree objective as well as at the resource cost objective. For solving such an integrated problem, we apply methods for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and its variations. Each of the single problems is mathematically hard to solve and therefore, we concentrate on heuristic solution approaches.
Main Literature:
- Steenken, D.; Voß, S.; Stahlbock, R.: Container terminal operation and operations research - a classification and literature review. OR Spectrum, 26:3-49, 2004
- Park, Y.M.; Kim, K.H.: A scheduling method for berth and quay cranes. OR Spectrum, 25:1-23, 2003
Online resources
Business Contacts
An assistance at the Northsea Terminal Bremerhaven GmbH gave insight into practitioners` work and knowledge.
Contact
The research project is conducted by Dr. Frank Meisel (frank.meisel@wiwi.uni-halle.de)
Publications and talks (project related)
Publications and talks related to the project are listed here