Client: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
Dates: 2013-2016
Participants: CENIT, Facultat de Nàutica de Barcelona (FNB)


EFITAC project addresses the optimization of the yard movements in automatic and semi-automatic terminals with the aim to minimize the needs for energy consumption without disregarding their performance.

One of the main causes of inefficiency in container terminals are unproductive crane movements and their hindrance in operational terms (longer average times to retrieve a container) and energetically (larger energy consumption to produce the movements).

The project analyzes existing methodologies for yard organization and optimization to later propose and assess new strategies and algorithms for container allocation and management with regard to the main objective of the project: to minimize energy consumption in yard operations. The decrease in rehandling (unproductive) movements is considered a problem constraint.

In order to validate the models developed, both simulation and analytical calculations are to be used, both for designed experiments and a real case using data from an existing terminal in Barcelona.

So far, two research papers with proven methodologies to reduce rehandling have been produced (in press) whereas in a final stage, the twin crane conflict problem is being assessed.

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