The Truck Appointment Service Model In Container Terminal

To cope with the serious congestion in the port caused by containers’ uneven arrival at peak time, queue theory and the stationary backlog-carryover (SBC) approach are used in the research. Internal terminal service ability and external container truck arriving pattern are both taken into consideration to design the appointment strategy, based on the two-phase queuing time at the gate and at the yard, a multi-objective model is built to optimize the number of appointed trucks per time slot. Solved the model by using the algorithm of improved NSGA-II, also analyzed the sensitivity of the model’s key parameters. The main researches in this paper are as follows:(1) In-depth analysis of the arrival characteristics and queuing system of trucks was did through research and statistical analysis of large amounts of data. For the problem which the queue length is difficult to estimate under the trucks’non-stationary arrival, introducing the stationary backlog-carryover approach to estimate the trucks’average waiting time when the service intensity is over one.(2) Considering the uncertain factors like truck’s late and no-showing, establish a multi-objective model to balance the interest between the truck driver and the terminal, and solve the model by using the algorithm of improved NSGA-II.(3) Analyzed the influence of four key parameters including the number of appointment, the trucks’late rate, the trucks’ no-showing rate and the length of appointment time-slot on the model. Solved the conditions each parameter should to be met in order to guarantee the effectiveness of the appointment system.(4) Taking one container terminal of Yantian for example, verified the effectiveness of the model and algorithm in the paper, and provide a further decision scheme after sensitivity analysis for the effective implementation of appointment in this terminal.This research can solve trucks’scheduling both in peak and off-peak time, it’s a complement to existing research about truck appointment schedule; Besides, the multi-objective model can’t balance the trucks’ arrival, but reduce trucks’ average waiting and emissions, because of these advantages, the truck appointment service would be applied widely in the country in the future.