multi-agent systems for container terminal management

ABSTRACTThis thesis describes research concerning the application of multi-agent basedsimulation for evaluating container terminal management operations. Thegrowth of containerization, i.e., transporting goods in a container, has createdproblems for ports and container terminals. For instance, many containerterminals are reaching their capacity limits and increasingly leading to trafficand port congestion. Container terminal managers have several, oftenconflicting goals, such as serve a container ship as fast as possible whileminimizing terminal equipment costsThe focus of the research involves the performance from the containerterminal manager’s perspective and how to improve the understanding ofthe factors of productivity and how they are related to each other. The needto manage complex systems such as container terminals requires new waysfor finding solutions, e.g., by applying novel methods and technologies. Theapproach taken in this thesis is to model the decision makers involved in thecontainer terminal operations and various types of terminal equipment, e.g.,cranes, transporters, etc., as software agents. The general question addressedin this work is: can the performance of a container terminal be improved byusing agent-based technologies?In order to evaluate the multi-agent based systems approach, a simulationtool, called SimPort, was developed for evaluating container terminalmanagement policies. The methods for modelling the entities in a containerterminal are presented along with the simulation experiments conducted. Theresults indicate that certain policies can yield faster ship turn-around timesand that certain stacking policies can lead to improved productivity.Moreover, a multi-agent based simulation approach is used to evaluate anew type of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) using a cassette system, andcompare it to a traditional AGV system. The results suggest that the cassettebasedsystem is more cost efficient than a traditional AGV system in certainconfigurations. Finally, an agent-based approach is investigated forevaluating the governance structure of the stakeholders involved in atransport corridor.The results of the research indicate that the performance of a containerterminal can be improved by using agent-based technologies. This conclusionis based upon several studies, both conceptual and concrete simulationexperiments. In particular, multi-agent based simulation seems to offercontainer terminal management a suitable tool to control, coordinate, design,evaluate and improve productivity.i