Logistic Operating Curves for Ship-to-Shore Cranes

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Carlos Jahn; Professor Dr.-Ing. Hermann Lödding
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508626914

Container terminals are the central hubs of global trade. Smooth container transport operations require efficient and stable logistical processes. The heart of the container terminal is the ship-to-shore crane. This equipment loads and unloads the vessels and therefore handles the containers between the quayside and the vessel. Together with the vehicles for horizontal transport, the so-called terminal trucks, the ship-to-shore crane is the success-critical work system to achieve logistic objectives. It is therefore all the more surprising that the design and control of this system in practice today is often mostly based on empirical values. Up to now, science has relied on a simulation or mathematical optimisation to design and control ship-to-shore cranes and terminal trucks. In practice, these approaches have not yet been able to establish themselves: Simulations require a great deal of technical effort. The mathematically optimised solutions quickly lose their validity due to disruptions and changes in the operational process. So far, there is no procedure that can represent the conflicting goals with manageable effort, sufficient generality and high accuracy and thus enable the design and control of container terminals. The idea of this research project is to transfer the Funnel Model and Logistic Operating Curves Theory to container terminals. These theories have proven themselves in production already and are able to illustrate the conflicting goals in a simple and clear way. Based on this, a procedure for a model-based design and order assignment for container terminals will be developed. The aim is to ensure high productivity of the ship-to-shore cranes and to achieve short dispatch times for the vessels. Both the modelling and the procedures for design and order assignment will be evaluated in a multi-stage process with the help of simulations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants