A Study on Determining the Optimal Amount of Labor Force for Cargo Handling in the Harbor

항만 하역 노동력의 최적 규모 결정에 관하여

Today, about 99% of total import and export cargo in Korea is being transported through the port. The general trends of cargo handling show increases in capacity and speed, In order to cope with these trends, it is not only required to raise the efficiencies of port operation and function but also necessary to decide the optimal amount of the skilled labor force for cargo handling in the port. Cargo handling in the port is basically relied on the cargo handling facilities. Therefore, it is very important to reserve the amount of labor force for cargo handling system has been developed up to a certain level but the personnel management system which is the superior structure has not been followed well. In this study, therefore, we show a method to determine the required amount of labor force for cargo handling considering the amount of cargo and type of cargo handling work per each cargo, and the optimal amount labor force in cope with the fluctuation of the basic cargo handling labor force with respect to the time of in and out cargo flow in the viewpoint of minimizing the expences due to reservation of extra labor force than needed and firing employment of labor force using the Dynamic Programming. The derived algorithm is introduced into the computer simulation for Pusan port with the analyzed real data such as amount of cargo handling in the port with respect to working hour, cargo capacity, working step, the ratio of cargo handling facility and actual number of workers and we estimated the required labor force. As a result of analysis the labor force of Pusan port showed the over-employment such as maximum 21.4%, minimum 8.2% when we assumed that the averages of actual working hours and days were 8 hours in a day and 20 day in a month.