Storage yard management for transshipment ports

Abstract

In transshipment ports, the loading and unloading activities are both concentrated and inevitably happen at the same time. Thus the storage yard management is more challenging than that in a general import-export container terminal. Our studies on storage yard management can be divided into three phases, namely yard sectioning, yard template planning and space allocation. This paper focuses on the short-term space allocation from an integrated perspective, where all yard resources are considered. A flexible space-sharing strategy is used in this study to improve the space utilization while storing the containers according to their destination vessel for a faster loading process. A MIP model is formulated for space allocation considering the storage space, yard cranes and prime movers. Numerical experiments show that the MIP model can effectively control violations in short-term space allocation. And the flexible space-sharing strategy can increase the storage capacity and make the storage yard more adaptable to fluctuations caused by vessel delay.