Optimization Of Truck Appointment Mode In Container Terminal

With the continuous prosperity and development of container transportation,the trend of large scale and high efficiency is more obvious for a container terminal.The increase of container capacity brings more opportunities and challenges.Nowadays,the queue congestion of trucks in port operation is one of the problems that port managers cannot ignore anymore.Consequently,reducing terminal congestion,improving the operation efficiency of container terminals,and reducing the waiting time of trucks,so as to optimize the le'vel of customer service,have became one of the important ways to improve the competitiveness of ports.In order to alleviate the truck terminal congestions,some domestic and foreign ports such as Los Angeles port and Long Beach port in the United States,Vancouver port in Canada and China's Tianjin port has implemented truck appointment system to manage the truck arrivals.By setting different limitation of the number of trucks in different time periods,the truck appointment system restrains and reduces the high peak amount of truck arrivals.However,the truck appointment system is a complex system,and many factors need to be considered in this system.At the same time,the pattern of truck arrivals has time-varying characteristics,which makes the study of the system more complex.In conclusion,the research on truck appointment system is still a big gap.This paper analyzes the primary causes of the truck operation in a container terminal port,and sets up the optimization model for truck arrival pattern by considering both internal and external factors,to optimize the appointment quota for each period of the working day.Through the example analysis,we can compare the truck arrival flow under the appointment mode with the non scheduled mode and we can clearly found that waiting time of the trucks is greatly reduced under the appointment mode,and the number of trucks in the peak is be effectively reduced.In the other words,the truck flow can be changed more smoothly and evenly.To a certain extent,the congestion of trucks can be alleviated.And it also provides a reference basis for the management of port managers.