Abstract
When a Container Terminal (CT) is being newly planned or re-designed, the yard equipment must be selected before the yard layout can be planned. Commonly, Rubber-Tired Gantry cranes (RTGs) are selected for stacking the laden containers in the yard. These are available in different dimensions, typically designed to span over yard blocks between five to nine containers wide. The lift heights usually support four, five, or six containers that are stacked on top of each other. But what are the implications of the selected RTG dimension on the yard productivity? In a step-by-step analysis, the stacking density and yard productivity are estimated for the different RTG dimensions. The yard area of the CT MSC Valencia serves as an example and reference. It is shown that the stacking density ranges from 233 to 320 Twenty-foot Ground Slot (TGS) per hectare (ha) and from 853 to 1744 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) per ha. When the simplistic rule of one RTG per yard block is applied, with increasing RTG spans the yard productivity decreases from 360 to 240 moves per hour. An analysis of operational data indicates that the crane cycle times differ slightly but are less relevant in daily operations. It is concluded that RTG deployment strategies (avoiding idling times) should be further investigated considering a range of commonly purchased RTG dimensions. Furthermore, the impact of higher container stacks on the number of reshuffles needs to be revisited in this context.
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Notes
- 1.
1-over-5 means that the containers can be stacked five containers high without blocking the RTG to lift another container over such a stack.
- 2.
5+1 stands for a yard block 5 containers wide and an additional transfer lane, compare also Fig. 1.
- 3.
A double cycle occurs when within one crane cycle both a truck-to-stack and a stack-to-truck task are executed, also see [27].
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Kastner, M., Jahn, C. (2022). Impact of Rubber-Tired Gantry Crane Dimension on Container Terminal Productivity. In: de Armas, J., Ramalhinho, H., Voß, S. (eds) Computational Logistics. ICCL 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13557. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16579-5_6
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