Research On Yard Space Allocation At An Automobile Ro-ro Terminal

With the rapid development of China’s automobile industry and the continuous expansion of international automotive trade, China’s import and export finished car number is continually rising. In the automotive logistics, there is a growing tendency that using water transport when transporting the vehicles. As an important node in the automobile transportation chain, automotive terminals should improve their operational efficiency, strengthen the management level in order to win in the fierce competition, and promote the vehicle transportation carried out smoothly.As an important resource in the automobile terminal, the storage yard is a dedicated area for parking the vehicles, and acts as a buffer in the vehicle logistics chain. Because vehicles can’t be stacked, the yard resource is relatively scarce with the growth of throughput. Yard resource allocation directly affects the operating efficiency and cost of the terminal, therefore this paper focus on the optimization of yard space allocation combining current studies with the actual operation of automobile terminal yard.This paper mainly takes the yard space resource as the research object. Firstly, this paper analyzes the processes of vehicle export in the yard, and aims at minimizing the total horizontal distance between vehicle parking area and the ship. The degree of concentration of vehicles belonging to one single ship is also taken into account. A multi-objective programming model is established, and it’s solved by the use of the efficiency coefficient method. Thus the parking area of each ship’s vehicles and the number of vehicles parked in each stockpiling area is determined. A mixed display strategy is proposed, so the parking space allocation plan is completed. A numerical example demonstrates the validity of the model. The optimized space allocation plan reduces the total horizontal distance significantly, and the vehicle concentration is also guaranteed. Finally, this paper concludes that in the existing yard resources conditions, optimizing the space allocation plan could improve vehicle loading efficiency, and the same number of drivers can handle more vehicles in the same period of time. Especially when a large number of vehicles are to be loaded, the optimized plan can significantly reduce the ro-ro ship’s handling time in port and improve the operating efficiency of vehicle export.