A simulation study of the performance of twin automated stacking cranes at a seaport container terminal

Amir Hossein Gharehgozli, Floris Gerardus Vernooij and Nima Zaerpour

European Journal of Operational Research, 2017, vol. 261, issue 1, 108-128

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of a handshake area on the performance of twin automated stacking cranes (ASCs) operating on top of a stack with transfer zones at both seaside and landside. The handshake area is a temporary storage location so that one crane can start a request and leave the container there for the other crane to complete the request. By testing settings with and without such a handshake area, the goal is to find robust rules which result in the best performance, measured as (1) the makespan to finish all requests and (2) the total waiting time of the cranes due to interference or nonconsecutive delivery of containers in the handshake area (blocking time). The effect of five decision variables on the performance are tested. The decision variables are (1) the way the requests are handled by the cranes (scheduling), (2) the storage location of the containers in the handshake area, (3) the location of the handshake area in the stack, (4) the size of the handshake area and (5) the number of handshake areas in the stack. For each decision variable, multiple heuristics are developed. The results indicate that settings without a handshake area outperform settings with a handshake area for virtually all instances tested when using the same scheduling heuristic. For both types of settings, the choice for a scheduling heuristic impacts the final performance the most. In this study, we opt for simple heuristics since container terminal operators prefer to avoid any complexity in coordinating and scheduling two ASCs for safety and simplicity reasons.

Keywords: OR in maritime industry; Simulation model; Seaport container terminal; Twin automated stacking cranes; Handshake area (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:261:y:2017:i:1:p:108-128

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2017.01.037

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