Categorized Stacking for Imported Containers in Port Container Terminals

Abstract

Import containers are those containers that arrive at container terminals from overseas and transship to their destination through inland transport, feeders, or wait for being picked up by consignees. Since trucks assigned by consignees arrive more or less randomly to pick up specific containers, there is much more uncertainty about which container will be picked up before another. This uncertainty results in a great deal of unproductive moves. The purpose of this paper is to provide terminal operators with a good solution to improve the container terminal operations. A booking system for import containers is designed to collect information in advance and to reduce the uncertainty of container pick-up time. This paper also analyzes the historical data of import containers to retrieve critical attributes and to categorize these containers into several groups by the predicted pick-up time priority.