Analysis of a methodology for simulating a port logistics system to evaluate rail capacity in bulk ports

With the growth of the maritime industry, which is a key sector for many supply chains worldwide, ports are looking to increase their capacity and performance in order to meet the challenges and opportunities created by the increased demand. Among various possible avenues, port expansion is one approach to achieving the objective of increased capacity, but requires significant resources and careful planning. Before undertaking a project of this scale, it is important to have a good understanding of the port's current capacity as well as the requirements and limitations of an expansion project based on historical data and future forecasts. The objective of the research project presented in this paper is to develop a methodology for predicting bottlenecks and evaluating capacity in the context of a port expansion project. Moreover, the proposed methodology addresses the particular case of ports with limited visibility and data on their operations, which constitutes an additional challenge for port organizations. With the use of a quantitative approach based on discrete-event simulation, the proposed methodology is applied to the case study of a Canadian port.