1. 1 Motivation and Scope of Research Container terminals in seaports constitute interfaces between sea and land tra- port of goods in global transport chains. These logistics facilities face an increasing demandof service capacity,as is re ected by a tremendousgrowthin the worldwide container transshipments per year. For example, the top 20 terminals in the world showed an average relative increase of 14% with respect to the number of handled container units from 2006 to 2007, see Port of Hamburg Marketing (2008). In spite of this development, competition is high among container terminals within the same region. A terminal’s customers, rst and foremost the vessel op- ators, expect a high level of service quality where reliability is one of the most importantdimensions,seeWiegmansetal. (2001). Regardingtheserviceofavessel, reliability means to realize all transshipment operations within its projected service time interval. The reliability of terminal operations impacts the reliability of v- sels in meeting their liner schedules. According to Notteboom (2006) unexpected waiting times of vessels before berthing and unexpected low transshipment prod- tivity at terminals are responsible for about 86% of liner schedule disturbances, see Fig. 1. 1. Currently, many terminal operators counteract this situation by extending their transshipment capacities. They build new terminals or enlarge existing ter- nals and purchase new or upgrade existing equipment. Ilmer (2005) provides an overview of current projects for building terminal capacity in northern Europe.
Tremendous annual growth rates of container volumes transhipped worldwide reflect an increasing demand of service capacity faced by container terminals. In spite of high utilization, terminals have to provide fast service processes to vessel operators. This book addresses the related seaside operations planning problems by investigating berth allocation, quay crane assignment and quay crane scheduling. It provides extensive literature surveys, new models and new algorithms for these optimization problems. In contrast to other research in the field, this book strives for an integrated solution of the planning tasks, respecting existing interrelations between the utilization of quay space and quay cranes. For this purpose, the studies in this book are aligned to a new integration concept for seaside operations planning in container terminals. The planning methodology supports a highly productive utilization of quay space and quay cranes leading to reliable and fast service processes of vessels.
