Optimizing berth operation system in container terminal by simulation

A port is an important asset of the country and a national facility requiring lots of budget. Presently, approx. 900 berths of 31 ports are in operation in Korea and about 1 trillion Won is required for building the ports each year. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the appropriateness of berth configuration of the port and also evaluate whether scale of the berth built on the basis of estimated cargo volume at time of construction shall be still appropriate after a significant length of time. This study targets 11 steel berths of Gwangyang Port and desires to evaluate if configuration and scale of such berths are properly supporting the cargo handling. In order to evaluate configuration of the steel berths in Gwangyang Port, the author has collected Port-MIS data from 2011 to 2013 and analyzed the data for 3,591 cargo handling events out of 3,687 events except 96 events which did not intend to load or unload cargo. According to result of the optimal berth configuration using Arena Simulation, a configuration with 7 berths was proved to be the optimal configuration. That is, building 1 berth of class 50,000 ton, 3 berths of class 30,000 ton, 2 berths of class 5,000 ton and 1 berth of class 3,500 ton was confirmed to provide an efficient operation and service. It is expected to have an effect of saving national expenses by planning an optimal berth configuration in development of the berths through cargo volume estimation by establishing an optimal operation system through this study.