The reloading of a ship in a maritime container terminal as a queuing problem of interacting processes

Abstract

In this work, we propose a multi-server queuing system for modeling the processes that occur in a maritime container terminal. In our study, the main operations that take place at the quay and in the yard are first disaggregated into several elementary activities. Then we propose the step-by-step calculation of the times of each operation that influences both the unloading and the loading of a container. Next, we analyze the vessel cycle time while separately investigating the STS (ship to shore) crane cycle time, the RTG (rubber tyred gantry) cycle time, as well as the IMV (internal movement vehicle) transfer time. Finally, we apply two process-driven simulation experiments to the system analysis. The paper demonstrates the proposed model’s effectiveness with data from the BCT Gdynia container terminal. We show that, among others, even with properly planned work of STS cranes and RTGs, there is still a high probability that the quay will become a bottleneck of the described processes.