A Review on Yard Management in Container Terminals

Abstract

With advancements of quay side equipments and technologies, the bottleneck of port operations has moved from quay side to yard side. The yard management of a port has significant influences on the competitiveness of a port in the global shipping network. The research area of yard management has attracted a lot of attentions from both the academia and the industrial practitioners. This paper gives a comprehensive review for the studies on the yard management in container terminals. From three aspects, i.e., yard cranes management, yard vehicles management, and yard spaces management, this paper reports the advances in these three areas. Some future directions on the yard management researches are also discussed. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate more practically relevant researches in this emerging area.