Decision support for the intermodal terminal layout designing

Abstract

The article presents the issue of container handling processes at a rail-road intermodal terminal. In the article, we have focused on the problem of a terminal layout design from the point of view of parking lots for external trucks. The main purpose of this article is the assessment of the necessary parking lots for the trucks considering daily turnover of containers and the trucks appointment time windows. We analyze how the length of the truck's appointment time windows as well as the difficulties in containers loading operations and a number of handling equipment influence the necessary parking lots for trucks in the intermodal terminal. The trucks planned for loading of import containers may arrive at the terminal before the loading moment that is specified in crane operations schedule. The container handling time is given by a probability distribution. The equations defining the most important elements of the considered problem were presented in the general form. The special case of this model has been developed in the FlexSim simulation software. Based on the simulation research and calculations we pointed out that right truck's appointment time windows can significantly reduce necessary parking lots at the yard. The literature analysis presented in the article indicates that most of the research in the field of intermodal terminal is focused on operations in container ports. There is lack of literature considering rail-road terminal layout planning in terms of the necessary parking lots and truck's appointment time windows.