A decision support system for a capacity management problem at a container terminal

Abstract

This paper aims to design an optimization-based decision support system (DSS) for a capacity management problem in container terminals. The capacity management problem at a container terminal seeks to balance supply (equipment assignment) and demand (arrivals of trucks) while improving customer service level and productivity indicators. Specifically, this paper addresses the problem of determining the appointment quota for each time slot on a one-day planning horizon, within a container terminal working on a truck appointment system (TAS) environment. The DSS is developed in cooperation with an industrial partner to help them with their operational decision making when determining the appointment quotas, considering yard resource availability. The underlying approach makes use of a tabu search metaheuristic algorithm to solve a related optimization problem that balance the supply and demand of moves in the yard. The DSS is flexible, allowing several parameters to be configured and read from external files. Experimental examples using real-world data were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the system, and the suitability of the DSS.