Handling strategies for import containers at marine terminals

Many types of storage systems require goods to be stacked in a storage area. The amount of handling effort required to retrieve individual items from the stacks depends on stack heights and on the adopted storage strategy. The paper focuses on container import operations at marine terminals. It presents methods for measuring the amount of handling effort required when two basic strategies are adopted, one that tries to keep all stacks the same size and another that segregates containers according to arrival time. The strategies are compared in an idealized situation. The methods should be easy to modify for the analysis of similar systems.