A novel storage space allocation policy for import containers

In developing countries, such as those in Latin America, inland flows of container terminals present high levels of uncertainty and variability. This situation occurs mainly due to lack of automation procedures, affecting coordination with the hinterlands. In this article, a methodology based on a dwell time segregated container storage policy is proposed. This methodology considers only import containers, due to the difficulty to determine a segregation criterion, which motivated us to use container dwell time information. Dwell times are discretized to determine classes, so that containers of the same class are assigned to close locations at the yard. The architecture of a decision support system to aid the stacking decisions based on this storage policy is proposed. The port of Arica in Chile is considered as a case study, and a discrete-event simulation model is also proposed to estimate potential benefits of this approach. Numerical results for the case study show a good performance, with potential reduction of the rehandles incurred when containers are retrieved from the yard.