Operations management at container terminals using advanced information technologies
Container terminals use intelligent freight technologies (e.g., EDI, RFID and GPS) to exchange data with their partners, to locate containers and equipment within the terminal, and to automate tasks. This thesis illustrated, via two examples, how this data may be used to optimize operations at the terminal.The first part uses information on announced volumes to allocate internal handling equipment. The objective is to minimize overall delays at the terminal. The problem is represented as a network flow problem and implemented as a linear mixed integer programming model. A case study for a terminal at the Grand Port Maritime de Marseille is carried out. We also showed that combining the allocation problem with the dimensioning of a truck appointment system may reduce overall delays at the terminal. The second part uses information on announced container retrievals and container positions to improve retrieval operations. The objective is to retrieve containers from a bay in a given sequence with a minimum number of parasite relocations. We improve an existing binary programming model and introduce an exact branch and price approach - with a binary subproblem and two variants of an enumerative subproblem - and a heuristic branch and price approach - with a heuristic subproblem. The exact approach solves only small instances; the heuristic approach performs well on several instances, but should be improved further. We also deal with a dynamic version of the problem where the retrieval order becomes revealed over time and evaluate different relocation strategies for this case.