Analyzing and surveying the indicators of unloading and loading container operations of Shahid Rajaei port using simulation in ARENA software

The Ports have dynamic systems with random and complex patterns, which consist of several entities that have complex relationships. The complexity of ports, the need to serve modern ships from the port and the high costs of the industry make necessary the need for a flexible and dynamic tool to manage ports in assessing future needs, determining appropriate indicators for performance evaluation and the possibility of comparing them with other standards. The productivity of ports is an important condition in order to survive in the global competition of shipping trade. Because Creating infrastructures, equipment and developing facilities in ports are very expensive to implement and purchase, Therefore their inefficient use causes loss of capital and increase in operating costs of ports. Therefore, goals such as having a container terminal with high operational capacity, high productivity rate of equipment, reducing unloading and loading times, reducing the waiting time of ships, reducing traffic and congestion of ships and trucks in the container terminal, as well as reducing investment and operating costs is very important. The purpose of this research is to provide a dynamic model to evaluate the performance of Shahid Rajaei port container terminal in such a way that it is possible to estimate the key indicators of container operations parametrically in any time frame and make the necessary decisions.

The present research is practical in terms of purpose and is descriptive in terms of data collection method. In this research, loading and unloading operations at the quayside in container terminals of Shahid Rajaei port, including sea and port sections, have been simulated using ARENA software. For the design of the model and its validation, information of the shipping vessels entering Shahid Rajaei port during the 2nd quarter of 2020 is used.

The development of two scenarios of the current situation and the situation before the economic sanctions were applied. In the productivity section of quays and gantry cranes, the results showed that in the current situation, the average occupancy rate of the high-traffic quays on the eastern and front side and their gantry cranes were 27 and 34% respectively, with the change in the rate of ship arrivals and the application of conditions before the sanctions, the average occupancy rate of the quays and gantry cranes has increased and reached about 39 and 50 percent, respectively. Regarding the waiting time of ships, it was also observed that in the second scenario (situation before the imposition of sanctions) with the increase in the number of incoming ships in large and medium sizes, the waiting time of all ships, especially in medium and very small groups, has increased significantly.

Considering the desirability of the indicators of the occupancy rate of the quays and the ratio of waiting time to service time in both scenarios, there is no need to develop resources in any of the scenarios.