Efficiency Analysis of a High-bay Container Storage System – BoxBay

With the ever-increasing international container trade and e-commerce, container terminals face the biggest challenge in terms of container management and sustainability. For this reason, they have turned to the latest technology to upgrade their facilities and achieve higher levels of efficiency. The BoxBay project, an innovative high-bay storage system, is one of the most recent breakthroughs in container terminals. In this paper, the BoxBay project is being used as an example to investigate the different control policies that can be implemented to improve the efficiency of similar systems. Policies for task sequence, storage, and dwell points are being reviewed. Then, to estimate the minimum possible energy consumption for the system to be efficient, a mathematical model for the energy consumption of an automated unit load vehicle is being developed. Finally, a simulation study takes place to better analyze the system’s performance. Both the simulation results and the implementation of the proposed policies demonstrate that the performance of high-bay storage systems in terminals could be promising for the future and capable of achieving high levels of efficiency.