A dwell time-based container positioning decision support system at a port terminal.

In this article, a methodology as well as a decision support system for the container storage assignment at a yard of a container terminal is proposed. The motivation of the proposed methodology are the cases of container terminals where inland flows present high levels of uncertainty and variability. This situation is typical of ports in developing countries such as is the case in Latin America where due to lack of automation, there are many paper-based procedures and little coordination with the hinterland. The proposed methodology is based on a dwell time segregated storage policy, considering only import containers (due to the difficulty to determine segregation criteria for this type of containers). Dwell times are discretized in order to determine dwell time classes or segregations, so that containers of the same segregation are assigned to close locations at the yard. As a case study, the port of Arica in Chile is considered. A discrete-event simulation model is also proposed to estimate potential benefits of the proposed methodology. Numerical results for the case study show a good performance, with potential reduction of the rehandles incurred.