Yard management for improving the efficiency of a Container Terminal

Cost and time efficient port operations are vital nowadays due to the increasing port competition worldwide. In many cases, efficiency may overcome strategic positioning, i.e. a shipping line may prefer to call at a port which is able to handle efficiently a large mother vessel, and take advantage of economies of scale, even if it is not situated near to the main international shipping routes. In the era of continuously increasing containerized cargo traffic, yard space management of a container terminal (CT) is of critical importance. Yard congestion constitutes one of the major problems that CTs face today and has a negative impact on their efficiency. Inadequate space in a CT yard increases a ships turnaround time and thus the amount of sunk cost that a shipping line will have to bare. Increased operating costs, reduce attractiveness and thus competitiveness. Under this context the goal of this paper is to develop a decision support tool, applying queuing theory, that will assist Port Operators to (a) model the delivery and receipt operation of a CT and (b) adopt one of the following operational policies (i) purchase of an extra straddle carrier and (ii) application of an appointment system. The applicability of the proposed methodology is identified through an illustrative case study. The examined container terminal may be that of Thessaloniki. The paper findings may be used to provide general guidelines and specific suggestions for improving the performance of this operation, resulting in a faster container turnover which in turn decreases container yard congestion.