A Study on the Optimal Combination of Berth and Crane in Container Terminal

컨테이너터미널 사용자비용을 최소로 하는 선석과 크레인의 최적구성에 관한 연구

Recently, the traffic volume has been greatly increased partly because of high growth rate of domestic and world economy, and partly because of increased transhipment demand resulting from the destruction of Kobe port by earthqwake early this year. So, container facilities in Pusan Port are under serious congestion. The congestion costs in connection with container traffic in Pusan Port is estimated to be 29.3 billion won in 1994. In 1995 the situation is still worsening. PECT has continued to grow annually by 35% in cargo handling exceeding more than 31% of the total container volumes handled in Korea. The BOR of container berths in PECT in 1994 is 75% reflecting extreme congestion in container traffic. The reason for such serious congestion in PECT is the shortage of container handling facilities in comparison with ever-increasing cargo traffic. In order to solve the provisional problem, the shortage of handling capacity, a model developed to optimize the operation of PECT is described and demonstrated. The model minimizes total port costs, including the costs of dock labour, facilities and equipment, ship, containers, and cargo. The object of this study is, through the model results, mainly to determine the optimal combination of berths and cranes under various circumstances and to show that total costs per ship or unit of cargo served can be reduced by increasing the number of cranes per berth and berth utilization above present levels. Eventually, the results obtained with this model in PECT suggest that increase to 3 in the number of cranes per existing berth could reduce the need for major investments in berths and even reduce operating costs.