Global planning in a multi-terminal and multi-modal maritime container port

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Global planning in a multi-terminal and multi-modal maritime container port

Schepler, Xavier / Balev, Stefan / Michel, Sophie / Sanlaville, Éric

Highlights•We consider the global management of a multi-terminal and multi-modal maritime port.•A model allowing cooperation of terminals is introduced to coordinate operations.•The model is formulated as a time-indexed mixed-integer program.•Two heuristics are introduced, based on the structural decomposition of the formulation.•They allow to investigate the impact of a global management on port’s performance.

AbstractThis paper introduces an optimization model of a multi-terminal, multi-modal maritime container port, such as the ones in the European northern range. The decisions concern the scheduling of ships, trains and trucks on terminals, while limiting inter-terminal transport of containers and minimizing weighted turnaround time. Heuristics based on the decomposition of the resulting mixed-integer program are proposed and tested on realistic generated instances with up to four terminals. The efficiency of the restrict-and-fix heuristic allows to investigate the impact of a global management on port’s performance: an average improvement of 5% was observed.