A quantitative analysis of container vessel arrival planning strategies

Abstract

In maritime container transport, the random nature of vessel arrival and terminal service processes often lead to significant handling delays and/or resource underutilization. Arrival planning strategies (APS) promise to mitigate such undesirable effects by managing the variance of the terminal arrival process, taking different cost components and situational dynamics into account. We present a quantitative arrival scheduling simulation to analyze contrasting APS, in order to identify promising strategy design directions. Results are presented for central and decentral strategies, under high and low fuel price regimes. The analysis results in significant quantitative and qualitative differences between the strategies.