In response to the phenomenon that some container terminals are excess capacity and some others are overloaded because of the imbalance of transportation development, this paper proposed a 3D simulation model of operation system for the container terminal apron. First, we study the characteristics of operation system for container terminal apron. Second, a 3D simulation model of terminal apron ...

Transshipment yards, where gantry cranes allow for an e cient transshipment of containers between di erent freight trains, are important entities in modern railway systems and facilitate the general shift from point-to-point transport to hub-and-spoke railway systems. Modern rail-rail transshipment yards accelerate container handling, so that multiple smaller trains with equal destination can b...

We introduce a new model and mathematical formulation for planning crane moves in the storage yard of container terminals. Our objective is to develop a tool that captures customercentric elements, especially service time, and helps operators to manage costly relocation moves. Our model incorporates several practical details and provides port operators with expanded capabilities including plann...

Container transport, an integral part of intercontinental trade, has steadily increased over the past few decades. The productivity of such a system, in part, hinges on the efficient allocation of terminal resources such that the container transit time is minimized. This study provides an analytical framework, which entails efficient scheduling of quay and yard cranes, to minimize the time spen...

The performance of a container terminal depends on many aspects of operations. This paper focuses on the optimal sequencing of a yard crane (or YC for short) for serving a fleet of vehicles for delivery and pickup jobs. The objective is to minimize the average vehicle waiting time. While heuristic algorithms could not guarantee an optimal solution, a conventional mathematical formulation such a...

As more and more container terminals open up all over the world, competition for business is becoming very intense for container terminal operators. They are finding out that even to keep their existing Sea Line customers, they have to make them happy by offering higher quality service. The quality of service they can provide depends on their operating policies and the design of the terminal la...

The key to improve the container terminal efficiency is the integrated optimization of the quay crane (QC) and the yard truck (YT) scheduling, which is normally settled separately and considered in a certain condition in classical literatures. To improve the operation efficiency and simulate the practical operation, a PSO-based integrated QC-YT scheduling optimization model with uncertain facto...

As more and more container terminals open up all over the world, competition for business is becoming very intense for container terminal operators. They are finding out that even to keep their existing Sea Line customers, they have to make them happy by offering higher quality service. The quality of service they can provide depends on their operating policies and the design of the terminal la...

In this paper we integrate two decision problems arising in container terminals: the berth allocation problem, which consists of assigning and scheduling incoming ships to berthing positions, and the quay crane assignment problem, which assigns to incoming ships a certain QC profile (i.e. number of quay cranes per working shift). They are indeed strictly correlated, as the QC profile assigned t...