A simulation study on the uses of shuttle carriers in the container yard

In this paper, we investigate how two main factors affect the efficiency of the port operation. The two main factors are type of transport vehicles and layout of the storage yard. Two different types of transport vehicles (i.e., prime mover and shuttle carrier) and two different types of lay-outs (i.e., with or without chassis lane beside the container blocks) are modeled in this study. A total of four simulation models are created to conduct this study. To evaluate the performance, the gross crane rate is used as the main performance measure, which is defined as the number of containers moved per quay crane per working hour. In this paper, it has been shown that the incorporation of the chassis lane improves the gross crane rate for both prime movers and shuttle carriers. The improvement is more substantial when the port utilizes shuttle carriers.