Smart Port Community Lunch Meeting, Tuesday 20 May at 12.00 hours in T03-42

Debjit Roy is again visiting RSM this spring and will give the next Smart Port lunch presentation on May 20 (at noon in room T3-42) on models for container terminal design. It is always a great pleasure and very interesting to hear the presentations of Debjit Roy on container terminals, so we very much hope you will be present next Thursday and discuss the latest insights in container boxing and terminal design!

Models for Container Terminal Design

Abstract: The design of a container terminal includes several decision areas such as the number of Quay cranes, number of transport vehicles, number of Stack cranes, layout of the stack blocks (perpendicular or parallel to the quay), topology of the vehicle guide path etc.

In this talk, we will discuss the building blocks to develop an analytical model of a container terminal and how it is useful to answer multiple design questions. In particular, we will discuss about how the model can be used to choose a type of transport vehicle, quantify the throughput loss due to vehicle congestion on the travel guide paths, and identify a better stack layout. Then we will show how the basic model can be adapted to estimate the vessel sojourn times at a terminal, which is extremely useful for better planning and scheduling of terminal resources, such as berth and quay cranes.

Speaker profile: Debjit Roy is an Assistant Professor in Production and Quantitative Methods area at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. He holds an MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering (2007) and a Ph.D. (2011) in Industrial Engineering (with a major in Decision Sciences/Operations Research and a minor in Computer Science) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.  His research focuses on improving system performance using quantitative methods such as stochastic modeling and optimization. His specific research interests target the development of customized analytical models that enable the near-optimal design of logistical and service systems such as distribution centers, container terminals, and vehicle rental systems. He is currently visiting the department of technology and operations management at RSM and working on several interesting research problems in logistics with Prof. René de Koster.

Prof. Debjit Roy addressing the Materials Handling Forum at the Free University in Amsterdam, April 2014.