Agent-Based Simulation for the evaluation of a new dispatching model for the Straddle Carrier Pooling Problem

To deal with several classes of planning and management problems in different business domains (transport, energy,defense, etc.) and at different decisional levels (strategic, tactical and operational levels), significant benefits can derive fromthe definition of solution methods which are able to combine and capitalize on the strengths of mathematical programmingand agent-based techniques. In this paper, an approach based on the joint use of mathematical programming andagent-based techniques is exploited in the context of maritime logistics. In particular, a transshipment terminal is consideredwith the goal of planning the container transportation between the yard and the quay during the loading/dischargingoperations of a containership by exploiting a pool of straddle carriers shared among the quay cranes. The goal is to routethe straddle carriers by determining a sequence of container movements for each of them in order to optimize a givenperformance criterion. In particular, a new dispatching model is proposed and evaluated through an agent-based simulationmodel which also made it possible a better understanding of interesting properties of the problem under consideration.