Port Terminal Appointment Scheduling Problem

El constante aumento del transporte marítimo de los últimos años ha llevado a los operadores de terminales marítimas a investigar nuevas soluciones que aumenten su rendimiento. Un ejemplo actual es la resolución publicada por la Agencia del Petróleo de Brasil en julio de 2022, en la que destaca la importancia de contar con una metodología de programación de citas estructurada para organizar las operaciones buque-tierra.Esta investigación tiene tres objetivos principales: el primero de ellos es abordar el problema de programar citas desde diferentes perspectivas para ayudar al proceso de diseño de tales soluciones. El segundo es facilitar modelos de programación de citas que puedan ayudar a las terminales en sus procesos de optimización. El tercero es estudiar diferentes planteamientos sobre el valor de la información, diferentes plazos de programación, coordinación entre los equipos operativos y de programación, diferentes perfiles de congestión de la agenda, niveles de incertidumbre y normas de programación de atraque, entre otros.El reto consiste en encontrar un plan de cita optimizado que permita maximizar las ganancias de las terminales, considerando particularidades de cada solicitud de operación, incertidumbres en plazos de llegada y en procesamiento de los buques, los costes y ganancias vinculados a los contratos y la norma de secuenciación de atraques que utilizan los equipos operativos.Por un lado, existirán contribuciones en la parte de gestión a través de ideas que pueden impulsar el rendimiento de las terminales. Por otro lado, existirán aportaciones académicas a través de propuestas de modelos de programación de citas que incorporan la aleatoriedad en parámetros y consideran las llegadas como variables endógenas, conforme a diferentes perfiles de solapamiento de la agenda. Por tanto, se propondrán varias heurísticas, que abordarán los problemas de programación de citas aleatorios, enteros y no lineales (SINP, por sus siglas en inglés). Tienen en cuenta las solicitudes de los clientes, los acuerdos contractuales, las distribuciones de plazos de retraso / procesamiento y la norma predefinida de secuencia de atraques como insumos. En función de lo rentable que sean las operaciones, se define qué buques se aceptan o rechazan para operar, así como la fecha de la cita que se espera que se produzca.Debido a cuestiones de dimensionalidad, se propone una metodología de descomposición llamada ¿Cluster First, Schedule Second¿ (Primero agrupar, luego programar) con el fin de reducir el plazo de resolución. El problema principal se descompone en otros más pequeños que se resuelven de manera secuencial mediante la aproximación de la media muestral, de manera que la programación de cada grupo afecta a los siguientes. Los resultados de los modelos de optimización también se evalúan en un entorno de simulación de acontecimientos discreto que reproduce varias restricciones presentes en terminales congestionadas.Por último, se propondrá un conjunto de diez preguntas de investigación que guiarán todo el proceso de experimentación utilizado para probar diferentes temas sobre el problema de programación de citas de terminales portuarias. Entre las conclusiones, cabe destacar que los resultados muestran que las terminales especialmente congestionadas pueden lograr mejoras significativas en beneficios con medidas como las que se presentarán. También, se puede estudiar dar incentivos a los clientes para obtener más información por adelantado sobre la operación, así como aumentar la flexibilidad en la disponibilidad de días. Responder a los clientes de forma estadística dio mejores resultados, puesto que la terminal puede tomar la decisión con toda la información. En caso de que los clientes valoren respuestas dinámicas, una sugerencia podría ser ofrecerles un servicio superior para reducir el impacto general. En términos de normas de atraque, el método FIFO presentó buenos resultados en el caso de terminales con agendas congestionadas, mientras que la norma por programación fue mejor en situaciones con poco solapamiento. En el caso de llegadas al mismo tiempo, se recomienda priorizar en función de las desviaciones más pequeñas. Además, un resultado sorprendente es que las incertidumbres en las llegadas pueden, en algunos casos, ser beneficiosas, pero aceptar ventanas de tiempo en lugar de una fecha programada no lo es.<br /

The Contractual Pillar of Maritime Decarbonisation: A study on the challenges and potential of improving energy efficiency in shipping through contractual means

Climate change has grown into an increasingly important concern for the shipping industry, but the contractual infrastructure of bulk shipping has not fully evolved to reflect this. As a result, this thesis examines the challenges and potential of improving energy efficiency in shipping through contractual means. In particular, we focus on how charterparties could be adapted to both encourage and enable more efficient ship operations, while also recognising that stakeholders such as shipowners, charterers and cargo owners often have conflicting interests. Furthermore, we also examine the key challenges in revising chartering contracts both generally and specific to different efficiency-oriented contractual solutions. Properly aligning charterparties and all stakeholders’ interests with operational efficiency is important since chartering contracts serve as the underlying framework of international shipping. We combine a literature-based analysis with interviews of key stakeholders in the shipping value chain to not only synthesise previous research results, but also explore how industry experts currently perceive the promise and limits of efficiency-oriented contractual changes. Firstly, we expand the literature by examining the common barriers to revising chartering contracts. Secondly, we review the current status of just-in-time arrivals, particularly when requiring contractual changes, and analyse how policy interventions such as carbon pricing and the upcoming CII regime could also contribute to tackling operational inefficiencies through contractual means. Finally, we evaluate more recent efficiency-linked contractual innovations and assess the challenges they are facing or might face in the future. Our findings suggest that policy interventions are necessary to incentivise more efficient ship operations, but their effectiveness depends heavily on stakeholders’ willingness to adapt contractual structures and fixture behaviour accordingly. As the status quo is maintained by stakeholders’ vested interests, external stimuli are generally required to motivate widespread contractual changes. Furthermore, although charterers and cargo owners play a crucial role for revising charterparties, they have varying responsiveness to price signals and interest in proactively reducing their shipping emissions, which creates some difficulties for improving energy efficiency through contractual means.nhhma

Arrival concepts and aspects of port evolution in Nigeria

The thesis provides a critical analysis of the principles which determine a vessel's arrival at a port. The introductory Chapters, viz, Chapters 1 and 2 explain the nature of the arrival problem and the basic mechanics of the chartering market. The problematic aspect relates to successive criteria for ascertaining arrival which, to a certain extent have generally proved unsatisfactory. A comparison of their key elements concludes that the root of the problem lies in the adaptation of judicial rules to technological advances, and new trading patterns. This point is highlighted in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 which examine the historical evolution of the dominant theories. The lack of uniformity in the current application of arrival theories is illustrated in Chapter 6. Additionally, the Chapter considers the parameters of a standard test which can be applied universally, irrespective of ship or port characteristics. As a corollary of the study, Chapters 7, 8 and 9 assess the extent to which factors such as port creation, port regulation and port procedure may have a bearing on the ascertainment of arrival at Nigerian Ports. Chapters 10, 11 and 12 focus on the difficulties of interpretation, with respect to the compensatory provisons which have evolved to counter the perceived limitations of the various arrival theories. In the light of new developments in maritime transport, the uniform application of standard rules will probably become the norm rather the exception. The thesis accordingly proposes an implementation mechanism for a standard test of arrival

The Implications and trade-offs of near-port ship emissions reduction policies

Maritime shipping is considered the most efficient mode of transport in economic and environmental terms. However, its impacts on climate change through greenhouse gas emissions and on human health from air pollutants released near residential centres cannot be ignored. Over the last decades, regulatory bodies have been developing policies that seek to further improve the sector’s environmental performance and at the same time new technologies improve the efficiency of vessels. Operational practices of shipliners and port authority initiatives are also relieving the sector’s impacts. While there has been significant research on the environmental impacts of maritime transport, there has been relatively little work focusing on the effects of maritime activity in the proximity and at ports. This thesis presents a transferable framework that allows the estimation of emissions pollutant generation near the port focusing on CO2, SO2, NOx and BC emissions. The most relevant emissions reduction actions are considered and their effects on the environmental footprint of the port are modelled. The thesis emphasizes on the implementation of speed reduction programmes near the port, use of cold ironing at berth, and the effects of fuel quality regulation, considering the perspectives of the port authority, and the ship operator. The thesis considers the emerging environmental and economic trade-offs due to the different emissions reduction actions. A non-linear convex optimization model is formulated that minimizes fuel consumption in a sequence of port calls where in some areas speed limits or fuel regulations are in place. The results show that there is no universal port policy that can simultaneously minimize the environmental impact of all ships without economic or environmental penalties. This indicates that there is great scope of improvement in existing policies, and that regulators will need to decide what their priorities should be in improving the system. The achievements of this thesis can be beneficial to policy makers, port authorities, and shipping companies that wish to improve their environmental performance without sustaining environmental and economic penalties to do so.Open Acces

Barge Prioritization, Assignment, and Scheduling During Inland Waterway Disruption Responses

Inland waterways face natural and man-made disruptions that may affect navigation and infrastructure operations leading to barge traffic disruptions and economic losses. This dissertation investigates inland waterway disruption responses to intelligently redirect disrupted barges to inland terminals and prioritize offloading while minimizing total cargo value loss. This problem is known in the literature as the cargo prioritization and terminal allocation problem (CPTAP). A previous study formulated the CPTAP as a non-linear integer programming (NLIP) model solved with a genetic algorithm (GA) approach. This dissertation contributes three new and improved approaches to solve the CPTAP. The first approach is a decomposition based sequential heuristic (DBSH) that reduces the time to obtain a response solution by decomposing the CPTAP into separate cargo prioritization, assignment, and scheduling subproblems. The DBSH integrates the Analytic Hierarchy Process and linear programming to prioritize cargo and allocate barges to terminals. Our findings show that compared to the GA approach, the DBSH is more suited to solve large sized decision problems resulting in similar or reduced cargo value loss and drastically improved computational time. The second approach formulates CPTAP as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model improved through the addition of valid inequalities (MILP\u27). Due to the complexity of the NLIP, the GA results were validated only for small size instances. This dissertation fills this gap by using the lower bounds of the MILP\u27 model to validate the quality of all prior GA solutions. In addition, a comparison of the MILP\u27 and GA solutions for several real world scenarios show that the MILP\u27 formulation outperforms the NLIP model solved with the GA approach by reducing the total cargo value loss objective. The third approach reformulates the MILP model via Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition and develops an exact method based on branch-and-price technique to solve the model. Previous approaches obtained optimal solutions for instances of the CPTAP that consist of up to five terminals and nine barges. The main contribution of this new approach is the ability to obtain optimal solutions of larger CPTAP instances involving up to ten terminals and thirty barges in reasonable computational time

Development of standardised Key Performance Indicators within the dry bulk terminals industry

The primary objective of my research project was to work with five worldwide dry bulk terminals to assist them to adopt and/or extend Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to improve their business performance. The project also explores the case for standardisation of KPIs within the wider Dry Bulk Terminals sector. The project aims to answer a number of business and academic research questions. On the business front, these include: does effectiveness dimension improve performance of KPIs; how does organisational culture affect implementation of KPIs; and what role do stakeholders play in planning and implementation of KPIs? On the academic front, these include: how do management style and organisational culture interact during the change process; what role do information systems play in the planning and implementation of KPIs; to what extent were planned PAR stages followed in practice; and challenges in becoming an insider researcher? In answering above questions, the project uses PAR as a research framework through a single research cycle with multiple stages. Representatives from each organisation actively participated during each stage of the project. Even though I was an outsider to participating organisations, I played a leading role and directly participated during each stage of the project. The project makes a novel contribution in a number of areas. First, it has focused on dry bulk terminals rather than ports in general, therefore bringing forward the important role of this industry sector as well as addressing a gap existed in this area in previous research. Secondly, it has introduced the effectiveness dimension into the planning and implementation of KPIs in addition to the efficiency in order to bring in key stakeholders’ expectations and views into the picture. Thirdly, if focussed on dry bulk terminals which are significantly more complex and diverse in nature in comparison with container terminals where the majority of previous research concentrated. Fourthly, the project examined a large number of areas where performance KPIs are utilised, led by the participants rather than by a limited or predetermined set of KPIs primarily driven by efficiency parameters. Finally, the project worked with multiple categories stakeholders, driven by the participating terminals rather than limiting those to two or three traditionally recognised stakeholder categories. As a result of adding an effectiveness dimension to performance KPIs, the project made a positive impact at participating terminals in areas such as competitiveness, stakeholder relationships, business continuity and performance. Participating terminals made effective use of elements of their organisational culture and adjusted their management style during the project to ensure success. Stakeholders played a pivotal role in the success of the project by actively participating in it. Information systems played an important role in the implementation of KPIs in coordination with the organisational culture in each participating organisation. The level of standardisation of KPIs in participating terminals was high and this in turn provided a positive platform to explore options for wider standardisation within the industry sector