Improving Quay Transport on Automated Container Terminals

In order to accommodate the growth in intercontinental container transport, port facilities have to be up-scaled drastically. One of the major challenges is to increase the capacity of the marine operation on a container terminal. In this study the model of a quay transport system using automated guided vehicles (AGVs) is used to deduce logistic principles for the design of a terminal layout and the operational control, and to assess the performance of the set-up by using simulation. It is focused on the transport between the deep-sea quay and the marine stack during the loading operation, being critical in the process. The key question is whether the proposed set-up is capable to produce the desired throughput. The study has lead to two new designs, the ‘circulation layout’ and the ‘crossover layout’. Simulation shows that under simplifying assumptions the quay transport in both layouts satisfies the requirements. The performance of the ‘crossover layout’ is better and requires a considerable smaller number of AGVs.