Simulation model for maritime container terminal

For logistic chains that have a maritime component, the ports transition involves a set of specific operations inside maritime container terminals. This can be cargo handling operations from the terrestrial vehicle in the storage area of ports, from port storage area in the maritime ships, as well as storage operations in the port area and other container terminal activities. Taking into consideration the multi-flow interactions and the non-uniform arrival of vessels and in-land vehicles, discrete event simulation stands as a feasible technique for investigating berthing capacity during the initial planning stage of the terminal or for operative planning of logistic processes at the terminal. If the storage area is analysed as a queuing system, the quality serving attributes could be evaluate. When different distributions for arrival flows of the containers in the maritime container terminal are taken into consideration, the quality serving attributes are difficult to estimate. In our paper, a discrete simulation model is developed in ARENA software for case of a maritime container terminal. The estimation of the general measures of performance for the container port terminals through simulation could provide data for the implementation in the management plans by port administrations.