Joint planning of berth and yard allocation in transshipment terminals using multi-cluster stacking strategy

In this work, a joint planning problem for berth and yard allocation in transshipment terminals is addressed. Multi-cluster stacking strategy is proposed to split each transshipment flow into a number of container clusters and then stack each cluster in different yard blocks. A mixed integer quadratic programming model is formulated to minimize the total distance of exchanging containers between mother vessels and feeders, and the workload imbalance among yard blocks. A novel three-stage heuristic solution approach is developed and extensive numerical experiments are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach and the benefit of the multi-cluster strategy.     

Terminal and yard allocation problem for a container transshipment hub with multiple terminals

This paper presents an integer programming model for the terminal and yard allocation problem in a large container transshipment hub with multiple terminals. The model integrates two decisions: terminal allocation for vessels and yard allocation for transshipment container movements within a terminal as well as between terminals. The objective function aims to minimize the total inter-terminal and intra-terminal handling costs generated by transshipment flows. To solve the problem, we develop a 2-level heuristic algorithm to obtain high quality solutions in an efficient way. Computational experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

The strategic berth template problem

A marine container terminal operator may have a situation with excessive calling requests to be served especially when some new service contracts are under consideration. For this situation, we propose a strategic berth template problem (BTPS) that selects the ships among the requesting ones to be served and arrange their berth-windows within a limited planning horizon. The BTPS employs the subgradient optimization procedure, which is an improved version of the procedure that the authors developed for the operational berth allocation problem. A wide variety of numerical experiments indicate the improved subgradient procedure works well for the BTPS.     

A heuristic algorithm for yard truck scheduling and storage allocation problems

The yard truck scheduling and the storage allocation are two important decision problems affecting the efficiency of container terminal operations. This paper proposes a novel approach that integrates these two problems into a whole. The objective is to minimize the weighted sum of total delay of requests and the total travel time of yard trucks. Due to the intractability of the proposed problem, a hybrid insertion algorithm is designed for effective problem solutions. Computational experiments are conducted to examine the key factors of the problem and the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm.