Simulation and planning of an intermodal container terminal

A decision support system for management of an intermodal container termina l is presented. Among problems to be solved are the spatial allocation of c ontainers in the terminal yard, the allocation of resources, and the schedu ling of operations to maximise a performance function based on economic ind icators. These problems are solved using techniques from optimisation, such as job-shop scheduling, genetic algorithms or mixed-integer linear program ming. At the terminal, the same problems are usually solved by the terminal manager, using only his experience. The manager can trust computer-generat ed solutions only by validating them by means of a simulation model of the terminal. Thus, the simulation tool also becomes a means to introduce new a pproaches into traditional settings. We focus on the resource allocation pr oblem and describe our modules for optimisation of the allocation process a nd the simulation of the terminal. The former is based on integer linear pr ogramming; the latter is a discrete-event simulation tool based on the proc ess-oriented paradigm. The simulator provides a testbed for checking the va lidity and robustness of the policy computed by the optimisation module.