OPTIMIZING THE CONTAINER TRUCK PATHS WITH UNCERTAIN TRAVEL TIME IN CONTAINER PORTS

The yard template problem in container ports determines the assignment of space to store containers for the vessels, which could impact container truck paths. Actually, the travel time of container truck paths is uncertain. This paper considers the uncertainty from two perspectives: (1) the yard congestion in the context of yard truck interruptions, (2) the correlation among adjacent road sections (links). A mixed-integer programming model is proposed to minimize the travel time of container trucks. The reliable shortest path, which takes the correlation among links into account is firstly discussed. To settle the problem, a Shuffled Complex Evolution Approach (SCE-UA) algorithm is designed to work out the assignment of yard template, and the A* algorithm is presented to find the reliable shortest path according to the port operator’s attitude. In our case study, one yard in Dalian (China) container port is chosen to test the applicability of the model. The result shows the proposed model can save 9% of the travel time of container trucks, compared with the model without considering the correlation among adjacent links.

Space-sharing Strategy for Building Dynamic Container Yard Storage Considering Uncertainty on Number of Incoming Containers

The implementation of AEC (Asian Economic Community) leads to demand increase at ports in Indonesia. This increasing demand is followed by operational efficiency at the port as well. In fact, ports in Indonesia have an average dwell time for 5 days. One of the causes of this long dwell time is container transfer inefficiencies during loading process. In this research, we will focus in yard management and increasing land utilization. To increase the land utilization, we develop the space-sharing concept to reduce the initial space needed for a given workload. Since the ships arrivals are also varying, this concept will be possible. We develop the concept by adding uncertainty on number of incoming containers at operational level as the determining factor in planning a shared yard area. We propose a simulation approach to evaluate strategies in making yard template.