Title: Optimal design of container terminal gate layout

Authors: Chu Cong Minh; Nathan Huynh

Addresses: Department of Bridge and Highway Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, 268 Ly Thuong Kiet Street, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of South Carolina, 300 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA

Abstract: Over the last 50 years, international trade of goods has grown significantly in the USA, and as a result, US ports have become bottlenecks in the freight supply chain and logistics. A particular issue that most US ports are contending with is gate congestion (i.e., queuing of trucks outside the container terminal gate). This research provides planners and engineers of container terminals a set of methodologies to design an optimal gate layout to reduce gate congestion. The use of the methodologies to determine the optimal number of service gates is illustrated considering various truck arrival rates, gate service rates, and waiting time thresholds.

Keywords: queuing model; pooled queues; gate layout; optimisation; queuing time.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2017.086306

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2017 Vol.9 No.5, pp.640 - 650

Received: 07 Jul 2015
Accepted: 26 Jan 2016
Published online: 04 Sep 2017 *

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