Development of Solution Methodologies for Berth Allocation Problem with Discrete Berth Layout (DBL), Dynamic Arrival of Vessels (DAV), Deterministic Handling Time (DHT) of Vessels, Vessel Time Windows (VTW) and Vessel Eligibility Criteria (VEC)

Abstract

The Container Terminal (CT) act as an important node in a supply chain industry that connects water and land for transportation of the containers carrying goods. A CT facilitates a vessel by allocating a berth for unloading and loading of the containers. During this process, the unloaded/loaded containers are stored/retrieved in/from the yard area. The total time taken for various activities for serving a vessel at a CT is an important performance indicator that drives competitiveness among container terminals. Therefore, for enhancing the performance of a CT, a CT is continuously trying to optimize various decisions that are expected to control various activities associated with servicing a vessel at a CT. One of the important operational decisions associated with servicing a vessel is the berth allocation decision, which serves as an important input to various other management decisions at CT and has a major influence on the total service time of vessel at the CT. In this study, the important decision problem: a berth allocation problem (BAP) is addressed as an independent decision problem. Based on the closely related literature review on BAP, this study defines a new research problem on BAP, considering simultaneously the problem characteristics of BAP such as Discrete Berth Layout (DBL), Dynamic Arrival of Vessel (DAV), Deterministic Handling Time (DHT) of vessel, Vessel Time Windows (VTW), and Vessel Eligibility Criteria (VEC). This newly proposed research problem is referred as BAP with DBL-DAV-DHT-VTW-VEC in this study. The main objective for the newly defined BAP is to simultaneously minimize the sum of the cost (called as minimizing the Net Total Cost (NTC): Handling Cost of Vessel (HCV), Penalty Cost of Waiting of Vessel (PCWV), Penalty Cost due to Late Departure of Vessel (PCLDV) and Benefits due to Early Departure of Vessels (BEDV)). Subsequently, this study tries to incorporate losses due to idle time of berth by including Penalty Cost due to Idle Time of Berth (PCITB) in NTC. In addition, to incorporate unequal priorities to the vessels, this study considers Total Weighted Cost (TWC) as an objective. Furthermore, this study deals with three due-date based objectives: such as minimizing the Number of Tardy/late Vessels (NTV), maximizing the On Time Delivery (OTD) rate of vessels, and minimizing the maximum lateness (ML), applied one at a time, as an objective for the new BAP considered in this study.