| 2001, China’ successful accession to the WTO led its economic progress to a brand new era and the development of China’s economy has been kept at a remarkable high speed till today. During the past 15 years, China’s import and export trade has been developing rapidly with the increase of economy, so ports, as the connections of the marine and the land, as the most important hub in the international economy trade, has gained a growing strategic position. From the first time to exceed 100 million tons of throughputs in 2001, to the achievement of 510 million tons of throughputs in 2014, A Port has experienced 15 years of rapid development along with China’s economy. With the opening of the compound channel, the ships getting larger and increasing in number, A Port is now facing a serious challenge for its auxiliary tug service ability.Production data and trends from 2010 to 2014 of A port are analyzed as well as the features of A Port, the hydrological characteristics and the usage of the compound channels, in order to predict the future development trend of A Port, the throughputs and the number of the ships in and out the port in 2018, with scientific methods. The inadequate configuration of the tugboat fleet in present A Port is revealed by the analysis of the working process and features of the tugboat and the horsepower, cost and service age of the existing tugboats. The usage of A Port’s tugboats in 2018 is predicted statistically based on the actual usage of A Port’s present tugboats and the port’s development trends in the future together with the analysis of the equipment rules, navaid features and working progress of A Port’s tugboats. And an optimization scheme for the tugboat fleet of A port wheel barge limited company in 2018 is proposed though the analysis and optimization of the configuration of A Port’s tugboat fleet.With the method of time series analysis, it is predicted that by 2018 the throughputs of A Port will reach 643.8 million tons and the number of the ships in and out the port will reach 71 thousand and based on these numbers, A Port should be equipped with 31 tugboats in order to form a tugboat fleet with 153600PS to meet the need of the port’s development. Considering the production requirements in the future and the ships are getting larger, it is advised that four old tugboats should be phased out and new ships with more than 4000PS or 5000PS should become vital supplement of the optimized tugboat fleet of A port wheel barge limited company. |
