An Application Study of the Berth Planing Model for Waiting for Berthing Container ship-to-ship Feeder Line Allocation

Container ships approach at container terminal equipped with facilities for loading and unloading containers. Most container ships operate on pre-planned routes and regularly dock at terminals in specific ports. In addition, the shipping company that oversees the ship’s operation plan enters into a terminal-only contract with a specific terminal operator within the port, and calls only at the terminal on a set date and time. Therefore, multiple ships docking at a single berth in a specific terminal do not overlap in terms of their work dates and times, resulting in an idle interval between ships. During the idle interval, no ships are available, so no unloading work is done at the terminal. If ships continuously dock at the terminal and unload cargo without an idle interval, the terminal’s productivity increases as the amount of containers unloaded per hour increases, and the port authority that manages and operates the port increases its revenue in the form of port facility usage fees. In addition, shipping companies benefit from the timely transport of cargo through the continuous port calls of ships, thereby activating import and export logistics. Therefore, the efficient use of idle interval is an important issue in maritime logistics. In this paper, we study how to maximize the value generated by deploying feeder ships of various sizes in the idle waiting section between ships whose work is planned in advance. In order to consider the research methodology, we review previous studies on Berth Planning. In addition, we establish a Bin packing model that maximizes the sum of the values of feeder ships, and then use the actual terminal berth schedule data to deploy feeder ships and present an efficient utilization method of the idle waiting section.