Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2014

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Industrial Engineering

Degree Program

Industrial Engineering, PhD

Committee Chair

Biles, William E.

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Evans, Gerald W.

Committee Member

Evans, Gerald W.

Committee Member

Bai, Lihui

Committee Member

Rockaway, Thomas D.

Abstract

The world wide transportation of all kind of goods with containers is a fast growing business. The challenge is to transport in the shortest time to the lowest cost. The vessels therefore become bigger and bigger. The biggest vessel with 16000 TEU is since December 2012 in service. But the next generation with 18000-22000 TEU is already being built. This raises questions in acceleration of loading and unloading process, the handling in the yards of the harbors and the transportation of the containers to Hinterland. The most common way is still to transport the container from the yard by truck, which causes a lot of traffic jams and pollution. With the growth of the volume and the limited space in most harbours the throughput in the yards must be dramatically increased. One possibility is to reduce multiple handling of the containers and to decentralize the transport to Hinterland. The idea of Dryports emerged several years ago. In this research a simulation model of all processes in the logistic chain is designed, with which all steps are linked together. A direct flow of the containers without any intermediate stocking in the yard. Todays average staytime of the containers in the yard of 3-4 days is completely deleted. The multiple handling is avoided. The variability of all input figures and constraints allows that the most real situations can be considered. Three different modalsplits are run in simulation. The results show, that it is possible to reduce the throughput time of the containers and the overall loading and unloading process of vessels in the harbor and to gain a high productivity. With the satellite model ( Dryport ) it is possible to reduce traffic in the yard and to avoid a lot of pollution. Overall shorter service times give an answer to the challenge of managing the future growth of the container business. The feasibility of the proposed model is confirmed.

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