Simulation Optimization Based Equipment Scheduling Of Transportation System In Automatic Container Terminals

Developing modern logistics is one of the most important national policies in 21st century and the key of logistics is to increase efficiency and benefit. Container transportation is one important composition of modern logistics. It is difficult for the operational managers and planners to make scientifical decision on the equipments scheduling of container terminal using the limited resources.In this thesis, an advanced container terminal which was established by Shanghai Zhenhua is researched. At present, the issue has multi-machinery, multi-stage, multi-flow mixed characteristics of the discrete operations, for which, according to the feasibility study, the problem will be divided into each other and relevant study of the five subsystems of the interactive. This thesis researches the scheduling problem of transportation system constituted by DV,QV and PV. Based on the research of the methods on scheduling nowadays and speciality of container terminal, in order to increase the overall target time of the terminal, this thesis establishes a mathematical model on the equipment allocation of transportation system in automatic container terminals using the simulation optimization technique, with precedence constraint, setup times constraint and blocking constraint. The main contents of the thesis include:Firstly, establish an overall framework for the optimization research of transportation system and analyze the operating system and layout of container terminals, and introduce the scheduling and dispatching system. On this basis, this thesis introduces the resource planning and scheduling planning system. Base on the thesis introduced above, this thesis establishes the model of simulation optimization.Secondly, after analyzing the operation flow of discharge and charge, this thesis established the simulation model of container terminal of discharge and charge flows using the Petri net technique, and analyzes the performance of safety, boundedness and liveness. Job-by-job heuristic is proposed to avoid the blocking status which is happen in the discharge and charge integrated flow.Thirdly, according to the different characteristic of three types of equipment of transportation system, different strategies are used to optimize the flow: rule-based approach is used to optimize the flow of DV discharge/charge. First, this thesis solves the confliction problem of DV. Second, this thesis employes three principles which are nearby principle, balanced utilization of DV and nearby principle using job bound, and then compares and chooses the best one using computer simulation. QV is the nerve centre of transportation system, and also the key of optimization. An improved genetic algorithm (GE) is employed to optimize the scheduling of QV. Because the number of PV is same with number of RMG, and the tracks of the two types of machine are parallel, the scheduling of PV is the same as scheduling of RMG. Lastly, this thesis calculates the lower bound of container terminal operation time.In conclusion, this thesis establishes the transportation system scheduling model of container terminal through analyzing the operation flow of container terminals, by which this thesis makes a helpful attempt in the quantitative research on the productivity of container terminal. Simulation optimization technique is used to have different equipment operation plan in terms of acceptable computation time. This study can be used as a helpful reference for operational managers and planners to solve some real life problems, such as how to improve the overall productivity of a container terminal, and how to balance handling resources, etc.