Abstract
The containerized trade market has been growing rapidly since its introduction. The capacity of ships and the amount of containers being transshipped at container terminals increases significantly. Terminals should handle their operations efficiently to provide the necessary capacity and customer service. In designing a container terminal, terminal management has to consider the choice for a certain type of berth. In this paper, we compare by means of a simulation study the performance of traditional one-sided marginal berths and indented berths. An indented berth enables quay cranes to unload and load containers from both sides of the ship. As a result, more quay cranes can work on a single ship. As main performance measure in this comparison we use the total vessel operation time required to unload and load a ship. This time depends next to crane productivity also on the efficiency of the transportation and storage and retrieval processes in the terminal. We have performed a sensitivity analysis in which we also study the relation between the selection of an indented berth and other design and control issues in the terminal.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Sandra L. J. van Meersbergen for her contribution in the simulation project that was performed for Amsterdam Container Terminals.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Vis, I.F.A., van Anholt, R.G. Performance analysis of berth configurations at container terminals. OR Spectrum 32, 453–476 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-010-0201-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-010-0201-8