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The impact of lanes segmentation and booking levels on a container terminal gate congestion

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Abstract

Recent trends in port performance improvement include the coordination of intermodal transport logistics to reduce congestion and inefficiencies generated at the gates of the terminals. Congestion at the gate of a terminal generates several problems such as pollution and long waiting times for truck carriers. As part of the strategies and best practices to reduce congestion, some ports worldwide have implemented advanced booking systems in order to coordinate truck arrivals and deliveries at the gate of their container terminals. We will refer to these systems as truck appointment systems. In general terms, a truck appointment system provides a mechanism where truck carriers coordinate their time of arrival at the container terminal based on an advanced booking. In this way, gate managers are able to better plan their port operations and equipment allocation, to reduce the waiting times of trucks and improve the turnaround time for container deliveries. In order to account for the real benefits of such systems, the particular conditions of each container terminal need to be considered. In this paper, a case study of a Chilean port terminal is analyzed. The aim is to provide recommendations that may reduce congestion and improve the container terminal´s gate control of truck arrivals, turnaround times and container deliveries by means of efficient lane segmentation policies. Several scenarios were examined under which different booking levels are considered for an environment in which the arrival of containers can vary significantly from day to day and on a seasonal basis. As a basis for our study a fractional factorial design is performed in order to analyze the impact of controllable factors on two service levels measures, which reduce the number of scenarios needed to obtain robust conclusions.

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Acknowledgments

This research was sponsored by Innova Corfo from the Economy Ministry of Chile by the Research and Development Grant P11IDL2-10759. We thank the support of San Antonio International Terminal, the Port Authority of San Antonio (EPSA by its acronym in Spanish) and the Port logistics community of San Antonio (COLSA by its acronym in Spanish). We specially want to thank Mr. Giancarlo Grixolli who was the gate manager of STI in Chile and supported the research project and validation of the outcomes. The research activity of JMO is supported by the Research Grant DSA/103.5/15/14164 as part of the Research Network “Modelado y Optimización de Operaciones en Cadenas de Suministro”. The authors declare that: The work described in this paper has not been published before. The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration. No data have been fabricated or manipulated to support our conclusions. No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were ours. Proper acknowledgements to other works are given. This publication has been approved by all co-authors. All the authors, whose names appear on the submission, have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 89140, Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico

    María D. Gracia & Julio Mar-Ortiz

  2. Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Universidad de Los Andes Chile, Monseñor Alvaro del Portillo Avenue, 12455, Santiago, Chile

    Rosa G. González-Ramírez

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  1. María D. Gracia
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  2. Rosa G. González-Ramírez
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  3. Julio Mar-Ortiz
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Correspondence to Julio Mar-Ortiz.

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Gracia, M.D., González-Ramírez, R.G. & Mar-Ortiz, J. The impact of lanes segmentation and booking levels on a container terminal gate congestion. Flex Serv Manuf J 29, 403–432 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10696-016-9256-4

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