Comparison of the operating performance of automated and traditional container terminals

Abstract

This paper explores key factors affecting the operating performance of container terminals, and compares the performance of various container yard (CY) facilities at the port of Kaohsiung using grey relational analysis (GRA) and the concept of entropy. The paper's findings can be summarised as follows: (1) The most important attributes affecting the operating performance of CY equipment include number of CY facilities, transport distance of CY tractors, speed of movement of CY facilities, handling efficiency of CY facilities, and number of working tractors. (2) Based on entropy weighting value and GRA, CY handling facilities can be ranked in terms of operating performance in the order of automatic rail transtainer, automatic stacking crane, rail transtainer, straddle carrier, and rubber tyred transtainer. (3) From both operating performance and green terminal perspectives, automatic rail transtainers represent the optimal CY model compared with other container handling facilities.

Keywords:

• seaport
• maritime logistics
• container terminal
• green terminal

Acknowledgements

The authors greatly appreciate Dr. Tony Whiteing, Dr. Dong-Wook Song and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and exerted efforts. This research was partially sponsored by the National Science Council in Taiwan (R.O.C) under Grant No. NSC 101-2410-H-022-006.