Container Assignment and Yard Crane
Deployment in a Container Terminal:
A Case Study
NANG LAIK 1 & E LENI HAD J ICONSTANTNOU 1
1 Ta nak a Business S c hool, I mperial C ollege London, S out h Ke nsing-
ton C ampus , L o ndon SW7 2 AZ, U K. E- mails: nang.ma @ imperial.
ac .uk, e . hconsta n tinou@imperial.ac . uk
Vessels and seaports are an essential part of world trade and economy. Owing to
soaring competition between the container terminals and pressure from shipping
lines to shorten the vessel port stay, operations research techniques are
continuously being developed to enhance terminal performance and efficiency.
However, many of these studies only focus on a single area of the terminal
operations, such as vehicle routing or berth planning. Although optimising the
performance of each individual operation is fundamental to overall terminal
efficiency, the interrelations between the various decisions should also be
examined in detail as a decision taken in one area at an early stage may have
a significant impact on downstream operations. The purpose of this paper is to
develop a unified approach within which the container assignment and yard
crane deployment problems arising within a given planning time horizon are
considered simultaneously. We have developed a new mathematical formulation
of the combined problem with the view to finding optimal container flows through
the yard that minimise the overall storage and handling cost. The paper presents
a description of the proposed modelling approach and a practical application for
the Port of Felixstowe. Preliminary computational results are reported.
Maritime Economics & Logistics (2008) 10, 90–107.
doi:10.1057/palgrave.mel.9100193
Keywords: Container assignment; yard crane deployment; container terminal;
optimal cost; case study; planning time horizon.
INTRODUCTION
Container terminal operations play a vital role in today’s world economy. Since
containerisation, the amount of cargos that are transported using the containers
Maritime Economics & Logistics, 2008, 1