Simulation Modeling and Analysis of Customs-Regulated Container Terminal Operations with Multimodal Transportation

World trade has been increasing dramatically in the past two decades and, as a result, container exchange has grown significantly. Consequently and to meet this increase, several container terminals are expanding and many new ones are being established. A port with one or more container terminals is considered a complex system in which many entities interact to accomplish seamless handling of containers inbound and outbound. The level of complexity is drastically heightened for container terminals containing multimodal transportation systems as they typically involve ships, rail, and trucks arriving to one or more terminals delivering containers of different sizes to several types resources including quay cranes, rubber tyred gantry cranes, straddle carriers, and more. Simulation can be a useful tool to assist in predicting the behavior of the system and its performance under unforeseen circumstances as well as to study possible modifications to the components of the port system. In this thesis, a generic discrete-event simulation model is constructed to simulate port operations with different associated resources and stations including loading/unloading, customs station, container yard and more. The analysis will entail studying various scenarios motivated by changes in different parameters to measure their influence on relevant outcomes including throughput, resource utilization and waiting times

Exact methods for the quay crane scheduling problem when tasks are modeled at the single container level

The scheduling of quay cranes (QCs) to minimize the handling time of a berthed vessel is one of the most important operations in container terminals as it impacts the terminal's overall productivity. In this paper, we propose two exact methods to solve the quay crane scheduling problem (QCSP) where a task is defined as handling a single container and subject to different technical constraints including QCs? safety margin, non-crossing, initial position, and nonzero traveling time. The first method is based on two versions of a compact mixed-integer programming formulation that can solve large problem instances using a general purpose solver. The second is a combination of some constraints of the proposed mathematical model and the binary search algorithm to reduce the CPU time, and solve more efficiently large-sized problems. Unlike existing studies, the computational study demonstrates that both methods can reach optimal solutions for large-sized instances and validates their dominance compared to an exact model proposed in the literature which finds solutions only for small problems.This research was made possible by NPRP grant no. NPRP 7-796-2-297 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of The Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Appendix AScopu

Sequence-Based Simulation Optimization: An Application to Container Terminals

This paper presents a novel method for simulation-optimization that incorporates the sequence in which the decision variables (resource levels) are optimized. The authors hypothesize that implementing such a sequence will reach a comparable solution in less computation time than the traditional method of optimizing simulations. Since container terminals are complex stochastic systems as they consist of different areas, each with detailed and critical functions that may affect the output, this method is applied and tested on a container terminal simulation model. This approach is anticipated to reduce the search space and improve the efficiency of the optimization process.This research was made possible by NPRP Grant No. NPRP 7-796-2-297 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of The Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.Scopu