Performance Estimation and Design Optimization of a Congested Automated Container Terminal

Container terminal capacity, as an important indicator of container terminal competitiveness, has become a primary concern of port managers, whereas container flows, which are supported by quay cranes, yard cranes, and automated guided vehicles, have a substantial influence on container terminal capacity. Container flows are analyzed in this article to estimate the performance of an automated container terminal considering traffic congestion, unbalanced task assignment, container batch arrival, and different berth and yard layouts. The operating system is formulated as a closed-queuing network with four stations. Theoretical analysis and the solution method are adopted to determine system capacity. The resource allocation and system design, specifically the number of vehicles, berth and yard layouts, and task assignment strategy, are optimized. Numerical experiments are conducted to provide management insights into port capacity planning, resource optimization, and layout design. Note to Practitioners - The construction of an automated container terminal (ACT) requires a sizable investment. Analyzing the performance of the container terminal with different configurations in the planning stage, which is before the construction of ports, is very important. Thus, planners can select better resource configurations. Generally, simulation is an intuitive way to estimate performance. However, formulating and running the simulation model with different configurations is time consuming. An analytic model for estimating the performance of an ACT is developed to reduce computational time in this article.