Seaport Authorities Research Articles

Automated guided vehicle system for two container yard layouts

The explosive growth in the freight volumes has put a lot of pressure on seaport authorities to find better ways of doing daily operations in order to improve the performance and to cope with avalanches of containers processing at container terminals. Advanced technologies, and in particular automated guided vehicle systems (AGVS), have been recently proposed as possible candidates for improving the terminal’s efficiency not only due to their abilities of significantly improving the performance but also to the repetitive nature of operations in container terminals. The deployment of AGVS may not be as effective as expected if the container terminal suffers from a poor layout. In this paper, simulation models are developed and used to demonstrate the impact of automation and terminal layout on terminal performance. In particular, two terminals with different but commonly used yard configurations are considered for automation using AGVS. A multi attribute decision making (MADM) method is used to assess the performance of the two terminals and determine the optimal number of deployed automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in each terminal. The simulation results demonstrate that substantial performance can be gained using AGVS. Furthermore, the yard layout has an effect on the number of AGVs used and on performance.

The Measurement of efficiency of Portuguese Sea Port Authorities with DEA.

This paper analyzes the technical efficiency and technological change of Portuguese seaports. Depending on the managerial procedure adopted by management, improvements or deterioration of efficiency can be induced. In order to analyze the efficiency of the aforementioned activity, a benchmark procedure is employed: data envelopment analysis (DEA), which permits the separation of total productivity into technical efficiency and technological change. It is found that the seaport authorities, which are state-owned but in some cases have private exploration, did not achieve total productivity improvements in the period considered, with most of them achieving improvements in technical efficiency, but not all advancing in technological change, thus denoting that there is room for further improvement in this activity.

Incentive Regulation and Efficiency of Portuguese Port Authorities

In all European seaports, organisational efficiency forms a vital component of the activities to improve competitiveness in the market. As public enterprise entities, Portuguese seaports rely on government subsidies to meet their deficits. The policy of subsidisation is part of the regulatory procedures that are intended to provide incentives for increasing productive efficiency, thereby allowing seaports to share in the social gains from efficiency in the form of greater, or at least stable, employment and local development. In addition, the drive for greater efficiency is meant to assist the ports' preparation for some kind of privatisation. In this paper, we analyse the technical and allocative efficiencies of Portuguese seaport authorities in order to investigate if the state's policy is achieving its aims. We find that the results are, at best, mixed, leading us to conclude that the incentive regulation carried out by the government's regulatory body, the Maritime Port Agency, is not achieving its aims. Therefore, we propose a policy revision to enforce efficiency, based on a governance environment framework.

Evaluating seaport policy alternatives: a simulation study of terminal leasing policy and system performance

The competitive characteristics of the North American seaport industry have, in theory, been causally linked to excess investment and low terminal throughput productivity. This paper empirically examines the link between seaport authority container terminal leasing policy and throughput productivity. Recent advances in inventory theory applied to service industries suggest the pooling of demand uncertainty can yield lower costs without sacrificing customer service. This concept is applied to a container seaport using simulation. The effort compares key output measures from a realistic base case model of the seaport to those generated by an alternative terminal leasing policy. It is shown that the pooling of demand in a common-user seaport reduces total vessel time in port by 17.1% with no reduction in TEU throughput. Throughput productivity is improved for the highest capacity terminals, while lower capacity terminals are made available for additional users or alternative uses.

Diagnoses

The October-December 1998 issue of Vikalpa had published a Management Case titled “Agricultural Development under the New Economic Environment: A Case of Zambia“ by B M Desai and N V Namboodiri. In this issue, we are featuring a response on the case by Satyasai and Bandyopadhyay. The January- March 1999 issue had featured a Management Case titled “Bharat Seaports Authority” by K V Ramani. We are carrying the analysis of the case by Farooquie.

Bharat Seaports Authority

The main objective of port management is to reduce the ship turnaround time by optimally utilizing the port resources. Reduced turnaround time encourages trade and improves the competitiveness of the port to provide efficient and effective services at low cost. The management of Bharat Seaports Authority is wondering how to achieve this objective. Readers are invited to send their responses on the case to Vikalpa office.

Computer simulation of a packet switching computer network

This paper is concerned with using digital computer simulation for the investigation of a possible packet switching computer network for the Saudi Seaports Authority. The paper presents a flexible computer network model for this purpose, and describes how it has been transformed into computer code using the computer language Pascal. The main network variable considered in the investigation is the topology, with three different topologies considered. The first is based on the star topology, while the other two are of different mesh structures. For each topology, the simulation results produced include: the average packet delay, the buffer requirements per node, and the average number of nodes passed by a packet through the network. In addition, the reliability and cost of each topology have been taken into account.