Optimising truck arrival management and number of service gates at container terminals

Purpose Truck appointment systems have been applied in critical container ports in the United States due to their potential to improve handling operations. This paper aims to develop a truck appointment system to optimise the total cost experiencing at the entrance of container terminals by managing truck arrivals and the number of service gates satisfying a given level of service. Design/methodology/approach The approximation of Mt/G/nt queuing model is applied and integrated into a cost optimisation model to identify (1) the number of arrival trucks allowed at each time slot and (2) the number of service gates operating at each time slot that ensure the average waiting time is less than a designated time threshold. The optimisation model is solved by the Genetic Algorithm and tested with a case study. Its effectiveness is identified by comparing the model's outcomes with observed data and other recent studies. Findings The results indicate that the developed truck appointment system can provide more than threefold and twofold reductions of the total cost experiencing at the terminal entrance compared to the actual data and results from previous research, respectively. Originality/value The proposed approach provides applicably coordinated truck plans and operating service gates efficiently to decrease congestion, emission and expenses.