A comparison of different AGV dispatching rules in an automated container terminal

Booming world trade, scarcity of land for yard expansion in many ports, and deployment of new massive megaships have magnified the need for finding better ways of performing container terminal operations. Automated Container Terminals (ACTs) using Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), with high operation efficiency and requiring less land, can thus become potential candidates for meeting future demand for higher capacity. However, the operation performance of such ACTs also depends on the AGV dispatching rules. In this paper, the performance of four different heuristic AGV dispatching rules in a container terminal operation is investigated. These dispatching rules are popular and easy to be implemented in the field of existing manufacturing systems. Simulations are used to perform terminal operations using those rules. The results show that the minimum yard crane queue size rule can achieve the best throughput performance.