Development of priority rules for handlings in inland port container terminals with simulation

A container terminal is a complex system with many subsystems, for example stacking area, cranes and vehicles, and a large number of decisions for each subsystem. Due to the interactions of these subsystems, there is a lot of stochastic influence and interdependencies within the decisions, which make an optimized operation of a whole container terminal very complex and without technical and methodical support hard to handle. One optimal operated subsystem influences all other subsystems and therefore does not result in an optimality for the whole system. To optimize the operations in an overall system with all its stochastic influence and interactions the method of simulation is used in this paper, which provides the opportunity to create an experimental model and identify the best recommended course of action. The Institute of Transport Logistics developed the simulation suite ContSim, which permits the modelling and simulation of material and information flows in a container terminal. ContSim provides the possibility to model a terminal on a microscopical layer. All handling and controlling processes of the terminal can be modelled and parameterized.