Purpose

Truck appointment systems have been applied in critical container ports in the United States due to their potential to improve handling operations. This paper aims to develop a truck appointment system to optimise the total cost experiencing at the entrance of container terminals by managing truck arrivals and the number of service gates satisfying a given level of service.

Design/methodology/approach

The approximation of M_t/G/n_t queuing model is applied and integrated into a cost optimisation model to identify (1) the number of arrival trucks allowed at each time slot and (2) the number of service gates operating at each time slot that ensure the average waiting time is less than a designated time threshold. The optimisation model is solved by the Genetic Algorithm and tested with a case study. Its effectiveness is identified by comparing the model's outcomes with observed data and other recent studies.

Findings

The results indicate that the developed truck appointment system can provide more than threefold and twofold reductions of the total cost experiencing at the terminal entrance compared to the actual data and results from previous research, respectively.

Originality/value

The proposed approach provides applicably coordinated truck plans and operating service gates efficiently to decrease congestion, emission and expenses.

中文翻译：

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优化卡车到港管理和集装箱码头服务门数量

目的

卡车预约系统已应用于美国的重要集装箱港口，因为它们有可能改善装卸作业。本文旨在开发卡车预约系统，通过管理卡车到达和满足给定服务水平的服务门数量来优化集装箱码头入口处的总成本体验。

设计/方法/途径

应用M _t / G / n _t排队模型的近似值并将其集成到成本优化模型中，以确定 (1) 每个时间段允许的到达卡车数量和 (2) 每个时间段运行的服务门数量确保平均等待时间小于指定的时间阈值。优化模型由遗传算法求解，并通过案例研究进行测试。它的有效性是通过将模型的结果与观察到的数据和其他最近的研究进行比较来确定的。

发现

结果表明，与实际数据和先前研究的结果相比，开发的卡车预约系统可以分别将终端入口处的总成本降低三倍和两倍以上。

原创性/价值

拟议的方法提供了适用的协调卡车计划和高效运营服务门，以减少拥堵、排放和费用。