Short-term space allocation for storage yard management in a transshipment hub port

In transshipment ports, the containers to the same destination vessel are usually stored together to facilitate the loading process, which is called the “consignment”. During operation, the actual containers that will come in are only known for a short period in advance. Thus, short-term space allocation is needed to assign incoming containers taking into account the transporting vehicles, yard cranes and storage space. Currently, the space is allocated based on the experience of port operators. To balance the current and future impacts of short-term planning, we develop a systematic method called “space allocation given long-term plan (SALP)”. The corresponding MIP model is formulated to utilize not only the short-term information, which includes the existing containers and the actual incoming containers, but also the given long-term plan, which provides a forecast of future requirements. The SALP method is evaluated under two storage strategies to achieve consignment, namely, the “non-sharing strategy” and the “flexible space-sharing strategy”. The numerical experiments show that the SALP method improves operational efficiency, but its performance is affected by the portion of long-term plan under consideration. The SALP method performs well under both storage strategies when space is sufficient. However, the performance under the “flexible space-sharing strategy” is better than the “non-sharing strategy” when space is tight.