Design and integration of the containers inspection activities in the container terminal operations

A key problem of a container terminal is the design and integration of the security procedures, such as the containers inspection, in the normal container terminal operations. The main goal of this paper is to advance a research approach for designing effective operational policies and practices to manage better the flow of containers toward the inspection area as well as understanding the impact on the container terminal efficiency of the integration of the inspection activities in the normal operations. To this end the author uses a modelling and simulation-based approach supported by advanced design of experiments, techniques and response surface methodology. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.