Yard operations in the container terminal-a study in the ‘unproductive moves’

Abstract

Research that examined the land utilization of the container terminals in a global perspective[1] revealed that the land utilization planned and achieved by Asian container terminals are much higher than the terminals in western Europe and North America. From the operational point of view, this has led to the question: ‘what are the impacts of these strategies in land utilization on the yard operations?’ This has subsequently led the research study to focus on the yard operations within the container terminal.

Notes

Higher land utilization should be understood as higher container stacking in the container yard.

The export containers have to be stacked according to their loading vessel and ‘type’ of container, for example, 20 ft and 40 ft. Therefore, the zones needed would be 10 (vessels)×2 (types, 20′ & 40′)= 20 (at least)