The impact of the implementation of category loading at container terminals
A simulation study into the implementation of a less compelling loading concept in which containers are loaded to deep-sea vessels at maritime container terminals
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Abstract
This thesis presents and discusses a loading concept to improve the efficiency of loading containers to deep-sea vessels at maritime container terminals. The efficiency includes the overall service time to handle a deep-sea vessel at the quay of a container terminal. Nowadays, the terminals are threatened by overcapacity due to a decreasing growth of container throughput and the vessels becoming larger. Shipping companies benefit from shorter times spend in the harbour and therefore put pressure on the process of handling the vessels. The container terminals have to invest heavily to meet the demands of services requests of the shipping lines. Researching literature about improving the loading process, it turned out that the bottleneck of the service time at container terminals can be found in the loading of the vessels. The loading of containers to the deep-sea vessels is more complex than discharging the containers from the deep-sea vessel. This due to the applied loading sequence that has to be retained during the loading, which is necessary for a couple of reasons: the weight distribution of the containers over the vessel and the locations of special containers, for example container that contain dangerous goods or have to be connected to the power for climate control, have to be placed carefully. An optimal solution for the loading process is not found yet. As a consequence of the complexity and the number of different variables that have to be optimized in this one process. Different situations as loading an airplane or truck and the handlings in warehouses offer partly solutions that could be used to the loading process of a deep-sea vessel. These solutions are helpful in a way of identifying important influences, like the reachability of goods in warehouses and the different moments of arrivals of goods which can cause problems during the loading sequence of the various transport means. Research in the literature focussing on the loading process at maritime container terminals shows that especially the output of the stacking yard crane, that facilitates the yard, delays the loading process. A promising concept of loading that is mentioned in literature classifies containers in categories. An improvement of 5% in performance of the utilization of the quay crane during loading, compared to a situation without categories is mentioned. The loading concept that is researched is a less compelling way of loading compared to the current situation and according to further research improvements of the loading process are shown. However, the research that is done uses assumptions on the loaded containers and only one way of classifying the containers is tested. Furthermore, no attention is payed to the changes in the process of loading the containers on board of a deep-sea vessel. Lastly, the research is done 15 years ago, the performance of the equipment and the size of the vessels is changed over time…