The Influence of the Storage Strategy on the Complexity of the Container Selection Procedure

Abstract

The paper deals with the practically and theoretically important problem of the container selection from the stacks of the container yard. This problem to a great extent determines the operational efficiency of the modern specialized maritime and dry container terminals.The severe ecological pressure exposed on the terminals ruled out the extensive way of the terminal development by the territory expanding. The permanent growth of the container flows leaves the only dimension to expand, to go high. In the same time, the increase in the operational height of container stack causes another big problem, that of container selectivity. With the growth of the number of tiers in the stack, the number of non-productive moves is also bigger, thus deteriorating the operation efficiency of the container yard. The results of the study shows that this problem could be fought by the changing the operational strategy of the box allocation in the container blocks of container yard. The benefits resulting from the changing of the strategy from the traditional horizontal filling of the empty space cell by cell and tier after tier to the vertical allocation of the boxes in sequential columns and rows are displayed on the concrete samples. This problem cannot be solved by the analytical mathematical techniques and should be treated with computer simulation.