A Study On Improving The Efficiency Of Container Entrance Gate And Yard Related Handling Procedures

The container throughput of Mainland China is rising in recent years.Many ports are facing the pressure from rising throughput. Due to therelatively low efficiency of the port operations, the services offered bysome ports can not meet the increasing demand. The operating efficiencyof the port has already become one of the bottlenecks restricting port’development. Thus, it is essential to optimize the operation processes ofthe container ports.The purpose of this thesis is to optimize the operations of containerport and improve its efficiency accordingly. Existing operation processesof container port can not meet modern production needs, but applicationsof RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) bring hope for change to ports.This thesis covers on the operational processes of the port gates and yards,explore the application of RFID technology to improve the efficiency ofport operations.In the first part of this thesis, the composition and functionmechanism of the RFID system is described, and the application of RFIDin the container entrance gates and container yard is analyzed, followed bythe assessment of gate efficiency and optimization of yard operation. Theimpact of RFID technology to the gate efficiency is explored. An exampleof Ningbo Daxie Port is chosen to illustrate the impact of RFID application,the average waiting time of trucks is compared before and after usingRFID. The results show that RFID can help to lower the waiting time oftrucks and increase the gate efficiency accordingly. Based on that, the gateservice is divided into three categories including quality service, general service and poor service based on the serving time. Then, the minimumnumber of gates is calculated under different service levels, which canprovide alternatives for the operations of the gates. In the second part, thecontainer reshuffling problem in the container yard is studied. The target ofthe thesis is to decrease the re-handling time. A single bay is selected to beoptimized. A mathematical model is constructed based on PCNN (PulseCoupled Neural Network) model and deconstruction of reshuffling processto optimize the reshuffling path of yard crane, ultimately improve the yardoperation efficiency.The study of this thesis has important practical significance. First, thegate congestion can be reduced. The labor costs and gate construction costswill be decreased in the case of gate efficiency. Second, the operationprocess will be optimized when the booking at ports is changed tobooking online. The amount of gate appointment task will also bereduced. Third, the reshuffling time will be reduced, the waiting time in theyard of the trucks will be saved, the container loading time of the truckwill be decreased. At last the yard congestion will be improved.