Design of an automated transportation system in a seaport container terminal for the reliability of operating robots

For the design of an automated transportation system in an actual seaport container terminal, it is necessary to take into consideration the maintenance of operating robots (AGV: automated guided vehicle and ATC: automated transfer crane). For this purpose, we develop an operation model in which each robot enters a maintenance mode while operating on the basis of its reliability. We also aim to design the mean time between failure (MTBF) which is a kind of a measure of robot performance on the basis of the robots´ reliability as well as the number of robots. However, this is a combinatorial design problem. Therefore, we propose a design methodology in order to derive one combinatorial design solution for a given demand by considering a system management cost that includes a system construction cost and a penalty cost. The designed systems are evaluated on the basis of the system management costs. Finally, we present the validity of the proposed design methodology and designed systems.