Planning for Intra-Block Remarshaling to Enhance the Efficiency of Loading Operations in an Automated Container Terminal

A stacking yard of a container terminal is a space for temporarily storing the containers that are carried in or imported until they are carried out or exported. If the containers are stacked in an inappropriate way, the efficiency of operation at the time of loading decreases significantly due to the rehandlings. The remarshaling is the task of rearranging containers during the idle time of transfer crane for the effective loading operations. This paper proposes a method of planning for remarshaling in a yard block of an automated container terminal. Our method conducts a search in two stages. In the first stage, the target stacking configuration is determined in such a way that the throughput of loading is maximized. In the second stage, the crane schedule is determined so that the remarshaling task can be completed as fast as possible in moving the containers from the source configuration to the target configuration. Simulation experiments have been conducted to compare the efficiency of loading operations before and after remarshaling. The results show that our remarshaling plan is really effective in increasing the efficiency of loading operation.