Simulation of yard operations and management in transshipment terminals

Due to intensified globalization of supply networks and growing e-commerce activities, logistics service providers have to deal with steadily increasing shipment volumes. Highly performing transshipment terminals have been identified as an essential basis to handle those volumes within transportation networks. In recent years, internal sorting processes have already been the focus of analysis, standardization and optimization. In contrast to that, yard management in the terminals is still operated with very limited automated intelligence. Due to the fact that performance of internal sorting operations can only be achieved by constantly high input flows, an enhanced efficiency of yard operations is the main challenge to increase the performance of transshipment terminals. Therefore a simulation method for yard operations in terminals has been developed which allows detailed analysis. Furthermore, it has been applied on an exemplary terminal and different controlling strategies have been tested concerning their impact on performance aspects.