Predictable uncertainty about terminal operations in the sea

Abstract

This paper considers a problem of planning short term operations in a bulk terminal faced by port management when making tactical decisions. Ship loading and discharging, cargo stocking, the maintenance and service of facility equipment are regular operations of a bulk terminal which is a subsystem of a sea port the conduct of which is subject to difficult-to-predict or unforeseen influences. The problem that port management encounters in day to day operations looks into making the best possible plan with the scheduled duration of operations/states and transition instants, considering various internal and external factors influencing terminal performance. A state and transition model is used for deriving effective solutions to obtaining the state order and state transition time of a bulk terminal with an objective of minimizing operational costs. The behaviour of the terminal is tested applying the stochastic and deterministic method.

Keywords

• operation planning
• tactical decision making
• sea terminal
• theory of general systems
• stochastic modelling