Container-Storage Yard

The container-storage yard is of particular importance for seaport container terminals, since it is the terminal’s central part from both the geographical and the processual point of view. Most of the terminal operations either originate from or cease at the container-storage yard, such that most terminal operations are directly or indirectly affected by the storage-yard operations. Therefore, the operational performance of seaport container terminals as a whole is to a large extent determined by the operations of the container-storage yard. In this chapter, the container-storage yard is firstly characterised and thereafter its performance measures and their importance for the performance of seaport container terminals as a whole are discussed. Then, different types of storage-yard systems are compared and—to motivate the further investigation—the automated RMGC system is found to be of great relevance for the performance of modern container terminals. As a consequence, this comparison is followed by a detailed description of the RMGC system and its variants. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.