Modeling and Simulation of Berthing Processes for a Panamanian Container Terminal using BPMN and Discrete Event Simulation

This study presents the development of a decision support tool for a container terminal in Panama, located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal. The rapid growth of containerized cargo movement in international terminals in the country has also increased the complexity in strategic and tactical decision making, affecting operational decisions as well. Therefore, the Business Process Modeling methodology is proposed as a tool to support the identification and visualization of the processes associated with container ships and participants in this process, followed by a discrete event simulation that generates the main performance indicators for this process area. The current model or "As is" model can result in "to be" or optimization models.