A Stochastic Model for Shipping Container Terminal Storage Management

A good port terminal is not only a major economic multiplier for the nation's prosperity by being a gateway for trading, but is also an attractor for other commercial infrastructure development such as banks, logistics agencies, and manufacturing and trading investments. A measurement of the efficiency of a terminal is the duration-of-stay of visiting vessels. A quick and efficient loading/unloading process can increase productivity and thus reduce the waiting time for a vessel. In this study, we address the space allocation for stacking export containers. If the storage layout and the loading plan work well together, the productivity of the terminal can be increased and the duration-of-stay needed for each visiting vessel is reduced. In this paper, we propose a hybrid storage policy combining class-dedicated and sharing strategies, and construct a stochastic programming model using the concept of recourse.