Optimal Control of Maritime Container Terminal Operations for Effective Utilization of Resources

Abstract

Maritime container terminals are essential nodes in global supply chains, enabling the efficient transshipment and distribution of standardized cargo containers. The efficiency of these terminals is vital as it determines the throughput rate and operational cost-effectiveness, thereby affecting the logistical efficiency of supply chains and the economic performance of interconnected markets. This paper discusses how efficiency can be increased with respect to container transfer within a terminal. Therefore, two mathematical models of the terminal operations are derived, which represent the transshipment and movement of containers within the terminal as well as between different modes of transport. For both models, finite-dimensional optimization problems are formulated and solved numerically using the optimization software WORHP for different scenarios. Results indicate that the proposed optimal control strategy is capable of effectively utilizing resources in the maritime container terminal where as the amounts of containers in the yard in for unoptimised case reach 35000 containers and for the optimised case it is varied between 4850 and 5100 containers.