Transshipment Hub Research Articles

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Vs Ptp (B)

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Vs Ptp (B)

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Vs Ptp (C)

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Vs Ptp (C)

An optimization model for storage yard management in transshipment hubs

This paper studies a yard storage allocation problem in a transshipment hub where there is a great number of loading and unloading activities. The primary challenge is to efficiently shift containers between the vessels and the storage area so that reshuffling and traffic congestion is minimized. In particular, to reduce reshuffling, a consignment strategy is used. This strategy groups unloaded containers according to their destination vessel. To reduce traffic congestion, a new workload balancing protocol is proposed. A mixed integer-programming model is then formulated to determine the minimum number of yard cranes to deploy and the location where unloaded containers should be stored. The model is solved using CPLEX. Due to the size and complexity of this model two heuristics are also developed. The first is a sequential method while the second is a column generation method. A bound is developed that allows the quality of the solution to be judged. Lastly, a numerical investigation is provided and demonstrates that the algorithms perform adequately on most cases considered.

Berth management in container terminal: the template design problem

One of the foremost planning problems in container transshipment operation concerns the allocation of home berth (preferred berthing location) to a set of vessels scheduled to call at the terminal on a weekly basis. The home berth location is subsequently used as a key input to yard storage, personnel, and equipment deployment planning. For instance, the yard planners use the home berth template to plan for the storage locations of transshipment containers within the terminal. These decisions (yard storage plan) are in turn used as inputs in actual berthing operations, when the vessels call at the terminal. In this paper, we study the economical impact of the home berth template design problem on container terminal operations. In particular, we show that it involves a delicate trade-off between the service (waiting time for vessels) and cost (movement of containers between berth and yard) dimension of operations in the terminal. The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the actual arrival time of the vessels often deviates from the scheduled arrival time, resulting in last-minute scrambling and change of plans in the terminal operations. Practitioners on the ground deal with this issue by building (capacity) buffers in the operational plan and to scramble for additional resources if needs be. We propose a framework to address the home berth design problem. We model this as a rectangle packing problem on a cylinder and use a sequence pair based simulated annealing algorithm to solve the problem. The sequence pair approach allows us to optimize over a large class of packing efficiently and decomposes the home berth problem with data uncertainty into two smaller subproblems that can be readily handled using techniques from stochastic project scheduling. To evaluate the quality of a template, we use a dynamic berth allocation package developed recently by Dai et al. (unpublished manuscript, 2004) to obtain various berthing statistics associated with the template. Extensive computational results show that the proposed model is able to construct efficient and robust template for transshipment hub operations.

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Vs Ptp (C)

Competition had arrived in the Southeast Asia ports industry and was not going to disappear. Group Chairman Dr. Yeo Ning Hong and his executive team had set the ambitious goal for the state-owned Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) upon its incorporation in 1997 to earn status as the Worlds Port of Call. PSA operated the Port of Singapore, which was the dominant transshipment hub in Southeast Asia. The Port of Singapore had long been among the worlds busiest ports and was a model of efficiency and operational excellence within the industry. But the events of the first few years of the millennium proved a challenge to PSAs competitive mettle. By the end of 2001, PSA had lost two key customers to an emergent competitor, the upstart Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) in neighboring Malaysia. In 2002, Chinese shipper COSCO Pacific was considering a shift to PTP. And by 2003, for the first time in 20 years, PSA laid off staff, and both PSA and government officials were in overdrive trying to explain the reasons behind the layoffs. This three-case series explores competitive strategies in a mature industry within the context of Asia Pacific.

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Vs Ptp (B)

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Vs Ptp (B)

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Versus Ptp (a)

The Battle of the Asian Transshipment Hubs: Psa Versus Ptp (a)

Choice of air cargo transshipment airport: an application to air cargo traffic to/from Northeast Asia

Based on a unique data set of 760 air cargo transshipment routings to/from the Northeast Asian region in 2000, this paper applies an aggregate form of a multinomial logit model to identify the critical factors influencing air cargo transshipment route choice decisions. The analysis focuses on the trade-off between monetary cost and time cost while considering other variables relevant for choice of transshipment airport. The estimation method considers the presence of unobserved attributes, and corrects for resulting endogeneity via a two-stage least-squares estimation using instrumental variables. Our empirical results show that choice of the air cargo transshipment hub is more sensitive to time cost than the monetary costs such as landing fees and line-haul price. For example, our simulation results suggest that a 1-h reduction in total transport and processing time for a particular origin–destination air cargo traffic would be more effective than a $1000 reduction in airport charges. This suggests that it is important to reduce air cargo connecting time at an airport via adequate investment in capacity and automation even by increasing landing and other airport charges.

Partner selection and synchronized planning in dynamic manufacturing networks

In this paper, we develop a mixed-integer programming model for integrated partner selection and scheduling in an Internet-enabled dynamic manufacturing network environment. We assume that all stakeholders in the supply chain (SC) share information on their capacities, schedules, and cost structures. Based on this information, the model addresses the issue of partner selection and SC synchronization for profit maximization, while considering various manufacturing and logistics constraints. Furthermore, we study the dynamic configuration of the SC and its performance with respect to different buyer locations, different order patterns, and the utilization of transshipment hubs. The model is solved using optimization tools from ILOG, located in Paris, France, and Mountain View, CA.

Terminal operations management in vehicle transshipment

This paper reports on the development of an automated planning and scheduling system supporting terminal operations of the vehicle transshipment hub in Bremerhaven. We describe terminal operations and derive an integral decision model for manpower planning and inventory control. Thereby we propose a hierarchical separation of the integral model into sub-models and develop heuristics to solve the arising sub-problems.

Serving Tomorrow's Mega-Size Containerships: The Canadian Solution

Continued growth of global containerisation led to the deployment of larger cellular container vessels. Many industry forecasters suggest the next generation of mega-size container ships will be 12,000 to 16,000+ TEU. These massive ships (about twice the capacity of today's largest container ships) will serve only a limited number of deep water or off-shore transshipment hub ports. There are four Canadian deep-water ports that could be considered for on-shore hub port development: Vancouver and Prince Rupert on the west coast, and Halifax and Canso on the east coast. Developing these major hub ports to serve North America's primary container trade are projects of national and international scope. Achieving this vision requires dedicated national and regional task forces to ensure infrastructure is in place, funding available, and legislative constraints eliminated.

The evolution of a regional container port system: the Pearl River Delta

This study investigates the progress of container port system development in South China, focusing particularly on the interplay between Hong Kong and the other ports in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. After identifying the downgrading trend of Hong Kong from a transshipment hub port for Asia and for China as a whole to a regional load center and the emergence of other deep-sea direct-service ports, the paper looks into the causes of this structural change of the port system. Four major causes are identified: the cost-base competition, the impact of the unique “one-country two-systems” policy, the impact of globalization and container standardization, and the impact of multi-modal accessibility and connectivity. The paper reveals that the interplay between different governments and between the governments and port operators are the local mechanisms that together as a whole respond to the shippers’ needs and the shipping lines’ pressure. It confirms that the interdependencies and competitive relations between terminals are being played out at a regional level. While the particular situation of the PRD is unique in many regards, the features emerging there, with its dominant hub, its network of feeder ports and its emerging direct-service non-hub terminals, are being replicated elsewhere.

Investment science

This study investigates a problem regarding simultaneous allocations of berths, quay cranes, and yards in transshipment hubs. Transshipment and import/export activities, general quay crane assignment decisions, and productivity losses incurred by quay crane interference are considered. A mixed-integer programming model is proposed to minimize the total cost, including speed-up cost, delay cost, penalty cost of vessels, and operational cost on container loading and unloading. An iterative heuristic is developed to solve the proposed model. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the efficiency of the algorithm.