based simulation architecture for evaluating operational policies in transhipping container.pdf

K. Fischer et al. (Eds.): MATES 2006, LNAI 4196, pp. 73 – 85, 2006. ? Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006 Agent Based Simulation Architecture for Evaluating Operational Policies in Transshipping Containers Lawrence Henesey, Paul Davidsson, and Jan A. Persson Department of Systems and Software Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology. Box 214, Karlshamn, Sweden {lhe, pdv, jps}@bth.se Abstract. An agent based simulator for evaluating operational policies in the transshipment of containers in a container terminal is described. The simulation tool, called SimPort, is a decentralized approach to simulating managers and entities in a container terminal. We use real data from a container terminal, for evaluating eight transshipment policies. The simulation results indicate that good choices of yard stacking and berthing position polices can lead to faster ship turn-around times, for instance, the Overall Time Shortening policy offers a lower cost and when combined with a Shortest Job First sequencing of arriv- ing ships on average yielded a faster ship turn around time. The results also indicated, with respect to the studied performance measures that Stacking by Destination is a good choice of policy. 1 Introduction The growth in the use of containers for transporting goods has been profound from 39 million containers handled in 1980 to over 356 million in 2004 and the annual growth rate is projected at 10 percent till 2020 [1]. Parallel with the increasing demands for transporting cargo in containers is the increasing importance in improving container terminal (CT) operations. As the primary function of CTs is to provide for efficient, low-cost, inter- and intramodal transfer, inspection, storage, form change, and control of cargo, the CT must be able to effectively act as an integral part of transport chain from origin to destination [2]. According to Frankel [2], port costs can be in excess of 50 percent of the total costs of w