Decision support for yard capacity, fleet composition, truck substitutability, and scalability issues at seaport container terminals

This paper presents the results of nine independent studies that link a seaport container terminal’s long-run average quay crane rate to various strategic and tactical decisions made by the terminal operating company. New numerical results on yard capacity, fleet composition, truck substitutability, and terminal scalability issues are obtained using a fully-integrated, discrete event simulation model of a vessel-to-vessel transshipment terminal that is designed to reproduce the microscopic, stochastic, real-time environment at a multiple-berth facility. These are the first such studies to be conducted using a fully-integrated simulation model of a non-automated container terminal.