Vehicle Routing Problems and Container Terminal Operations – An Update of Research

Abstract

SummaryContainers came into the market for international conveyance of sea freight almost five decades ago. The breakthrough was achieved with large investments in specially designed ships, adapted seaport terminals with suitable equipment, and availability of containers. Today over 60 % of the world’s deep-sea general cargo is transported in containers and some routes are even containerized up to 100 %. Seaport container terminals face a high demand for advanced optimization methods. A crucial competitive advantage is the rapid turnover of the containers, which corresponds to an efficient handling of containers as well as to a decrease of the costs of the transshipment processes. One of the key concerns in this respect refers to various types of equipment at container terminals devoted to the routing of containers to achieve high productivity. For instance, a variety of vehicles is used for the horizontal transport at the quayside and at the landside.In this chapter we provide a comprehensive survey on routing problems that have arisen in the container terminal domain, such as how to route automated guided vehicles, new technologies such as double rail mounted gantry cranes, etc. This opens up new challenges for the field. The chapter strives to summarize the research results for the vehicle routing problem and its variants regarding container terminals.