Optimising the yard layout of Container Terminals

Abstract

Over the last decades, containerisation became the major way to transport discrete goods replacing a part of general cargo trade and facing the increasing consumer demand of developed and developing world. As a result, container terminals became an important part of a lot of ports worldwide while new technology was developed to encounter the increasing requirements for the operation of container terminals. A container terminal has a quite complicated operation as different kind of equipment and people need to cooperate under a strict timeline that does not tolerate mistakes. The optimisation of a container terminal can be achieved by adjusting different parameters concerning different areas or equipment of the terminal. In this project, the arrangement of the yard layout is analysed focusing on a straddle carrier operation. The comparison criterion is the mean maximum travelling distance that a straddle carrier needs to travel for a seaside job cycle, serving the quay cranes. Considering a rectangular layout, making reasonable assumptions and using simple mathematical relations, the travelling distance of straddle carriers from stacking blocks to the quay is modelled and a proposition to minimise this distance is developed. Then, assuming the speed of straddle carriers for the different areas they move, the mean maximum travelling time for a job cycle is determined. The theory is applied for the container terminal of the port of Thessaloniki in Greece and a rearrangement for its layout is proposed. Using simple mathematics, for a simple yard layout, it is possible to propose changes that, for the port of Thessaloniki, can decrease the travelling time of straddle carriers up to 10%. This result is very sensitive to the assumptions of the driving strategy that straddle carriers follow and to the pooling strategy that is applied for the stacking yard operation.