The Scheduling of quay cranes and truck in Container Port——A Simulation-based method

Abstract

In order to study the Scheduling of quay cranes and tractor in container port, this paper establishes the simulation model of container port's (un)loading operation by use of container port's simulation software FlexTerm. The mixed loading operation and independent (un)loading operation in different quantities of Trucks are simulated. The accomplished time of mission, crane utilization and truck travel distance in two different loading operation modes are compared. According to the simulation result, some suggestions on allocation of truck and (un)loading pattern are provided. With the economical development, modern container port has played an increasingly important role in the global comprehensive transport system. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the container dock's (un)loading procedure and resources scheduling. For the complexity of container dock production operation, it's hard to use a single analytic model to carry out global optimization. The commonest optimization method is to divide the port operation system into several subsystems and optimize them layer by layer. To be specific, the port operation system can be divided into berth allocation, quay crane dispatch, level handling equipment's dispatch configuration, yard crane's configuration etc. In the respect of truck route optimization, (1) considered the truck dispatch model within the limit of truck resources, set up an objective function model with the minimum weighted sum of truck transportation time and waiting time and design the improved algorithm to solve the model. In the respect of (un)loading optimal configuration, some researchers studied how to define scientifically the container dock construction scale and (un)loading equipment's allocated volume, reasonably and effectively manage the container dock's (un)loading resources and reduce the operation cost. Through modeling and simulating the different distribution, different equipment quantity's ratio and different truck speed, (2) ot the crane's different utilization ratios and proposed suggestion on equipment ratio and truck speed. (3) proposed the berth's crane scheduling problem within the limit of crane quantity and established the multi-objective programming model. L. Chen etc (4) and H. Y. K. Lau etc (5) studied the crane, yard crane and truck's comprehensive dispatch problem and set up a model targeted at the minimum of crane waiting time, truck raveling time and crane idle time. They also offered three equipments' collaborative scheduling scheme. Zhuo Sun (6) set up a micro port system and studied the problem of port's resource integration, evaluation of system handling capacity and improvement of port (un)loading equipment utilization rate. With the development of computer technology, computer simulation technology has been widely used in the port design and planning researches. Armando etc (7) modeled the port container (un)loading equipment's operation and discretely simulated the container port load and unload event. Agostino etc (8) carried out the simulation towards container dock (un)loading operation with TRAINPORTS emulator. Based on the FlexTerm simulation software, this paper modeled and simulated the Scheduling of quay cranes and Tractor in Container Port, analyzed the simulation results, got the different trucks' configuration allocation and operation time comparison of mixed and independent (un)loading mode. Some advices on the truck configuration distribution and (un)loading mode are given.