Assignment and deployment of quay cranes at a maritime container terminal

The complex logistic process of vessel berthing followed by container discharge/loading, at maritime container terminals (MCTs), is focused in this paper. Discrete-event simulation models are well capable of representing the entire process in a stochastic, dynamic environment. Hence, simulation results to be an effective planning and control tool for decision making and evaluation. The assignment of quay cranes to berthed vessels and their deployment along the berth represent crucial decisions that could be well supported by integer programming (IP) models. Usually, these models are used as standalone tools. Starting from a discrete-event simulator for the berth planning, previously developed for a real maritime container terminal, we propose two IP models that can be embodied within the simulator to verify whether or not the weekly plan of the berth schedule produced by the simulator itself is feasible with respect to the available quay cranes. If not, the manager would be asked to repeat the berth planning step by rerunning simulation. The goodness of the proposed IP formulations is established by a numerical comparison against a test case taken from literature.